Paolo Veronese: a moment in the story of Alexander the Great | National Gallery

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the National Gallery's Talk for All. I'm Carly Allen. I'm one of the freelance lecturers for the Education Department. It's a pleasure for me to be talking about The Family of Darius before Alexander with you by Veronese today. It is considered one of the finest works by Veronese on oil on canvas. And when it had its home in the Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal in Venice for some time in the 18th century, it was thought to be the most celebrated of any painting in private possession in that city. It was on the to-do list of all the grand tourists in all of their guidebooks. So we'll think about why that would have been. It hangs in this spectacular room of the gallery, our gallery of high Renaissance Venetian painting. So it's displayed alongside paintings by Tintoretto, from the workshop of Titian. So representing these leading artists that dominated the art scene in Venice in the second half of the 16th century. And whilst this painting was being made in the later 1560s, we can think of the figure of Titian in the throes, in his last phase of his career. And it has had such an important impact on the painting of that city. And we see Veronese, coming up to 40 years old, having really learnt so much from Titian and from Tintoretto and then emerged and really established his own brand of Venetian painting, his own style. That was more refined, more elegant, perhaps more decorative. And we will possibly return to that word at the end of our half an hour or so together looking at this. So we will just for a few moments situate ourselves in Venice, in that powerful maritime republic. The painting actually does reflect that back, doesn't it? Reflect back its original audience, its original setting, and its colours and the vibrancy of its colours and this classical revival architecture that we see behind. And in the costumes, so we can find ourselves, perhaps imagine ourselves, dressed in the clothes of the time, in the styles and fashions of the time. And it is an incredibly theatrical painting, isn't it? It's almost impossible, we're so keen to use theatrical language when we look at this picture, it's impossible not to, because of its scale. It is enormous, it is 2.5 metres high by 5 metres with its frame. So it commands the space and it fills our visual field. And so our relationship with it is one of audience. And we imagine it to be possibly designed to be hung a bit higher up. We have this low viewpoint, this low horizon. If we really are in the front row of the theatre, watching the whole thing unfold, we can identify a backdrop, almost like a painted backdrop, this architecture in the distance bleached out in these silvery-grey tones. We can talk about this stage, the stage on which the performers stand that then drops down on the left-hand side. We can understand that by the head and halberd of this guard here, where there is a drop in height. And we are aware of costumes, some of them fanciful, some of them seem understandable, recognisable, others seem slightly more fantastical, invented perhaps. And there is a real sense of drama, isn't there, that something is being acted out, there is a human story being acted out. So this painting operates on lots of different levels. It is at once about Venice in the 1560s, and it's also looking back to the past, it's also taking a historical narrative and acting it out for you. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to think about it, well, first of all I want to think about the storytelling. We want to think about how does Veronese allow the drama to unfold. How does he use his actors, how does he use their body language, their hand gestures, the suggestion of spoken word in this painting to tell the story so wonderfully and so clearly for us. But beyond that, how does he use the materials of paint and his approach to painting to make this more than that, to make this really a painting of great brilliance. How does he use colour and contrast and how does he use an incidental, playful detail to keep our attention, to hold our attention and to allow us to continue to be interested as we move around the composition. How does he hold the whole thing together with these means of colour and contrast and incident humour often. But we don't have to know anything about this story to be able to understand straight away that it's about the relationship in some way between these two key groups of people We know that there is some sort of exchange here, some sort of spoken dialogue and there's a sort of negotiation of power as well going on here isn't there. Because we can see on the right hand side we have these fine, upstanding male players, we have these men who are upright, they are commanding, they are in control and then to the left in the centre of the painting we have this female group that's emphasised by the fact that they are being guided into their position by a male attendant above them. And so this female gathering which is lower, which says intentionally they have symbolically lowered themselves to show subservience in some way. They are at rest, aren't they. And somewhere in the middle there is this exchange isn't there. If we want to turn to our principal actor, we can't help but be drawn to this man in red, can we. And everything about him tells us that he is the star. He is in this brilliant colour set against the greens and oranges behind him and also compared to his companions who are wearing armour that is perfectly suited to the style of the date of the painting, he is in something a bit more fanciful, a kind of archaeological invention isn't he. It's something that's historicising. We can imagine that Veronese has looked at ancient sculpture. He has looked at Greek or Roman sculpture and he has thought about trying to bring to life this fitted body piece perhaps made of leather that shows off the form, shows off the torso and this divided skirt and these wonderful boots. And it's been suggested that perhaps you only have to go as far as to look at a sculpture perhaps from antiquity of Diana, goddess of the hunts, to find some good boots like that. And I rather like the idea that our principal figure is wearing women's boots to show off these sorts of sources. So this is our lead, as I say, our character. This is Alexander of Macedon, better known in the West as Alexander the Great. And he is in the throes of age 22 in this story and we are taken back now to 330 BC and this moment that Veronese has been asked to paint, he is in the middle of expanding his vast empire by invading into the territories of the Persian king Darius. And so the costume tells us that we are in the historical past. We also have these moments, don't we, around the painting that tell us that we are somewhere sort of eastern, that we are east of Venice. We have the monkey that I'm sure was one of the things that leapt out at you when you first looked at this painting, dark, set against this light architecture. We have people wearing turbans, the onlookers, the people above leaning over the balustrade to do what we're doing, to observe what's going on. And so here we are in the Persian territories and we're just after the Battle of Issus where Darius, King Darius III, has been defeated. He has fled the battlefield, gone into exile, leaving his family behind, the female members of his family. And then we're told in these stories, these legends, the legends that arise around the stories of Alexander. We're told that Alexander comes to have this important meeting with the defeated family. And so they have this important moment, this crucial moment, where they have, in fear for their safety, perhaps for their lives, they have this moment to throw themselves on their knees and beg for mercy, ask that they be spared. And in the turmoil, in the drama of this moment, of this encounter, the Queen Mother, Sister Gambus, makes this potentially disastrous error that she throws herself on her knees to show due reverence to the wrong person. She goes for the man who's the tallest and the best looking and best dressed, and it's not Alexander, it's his friend, Hephaestion. So everything stops at this moment. There's this crucial pause where she realises her mistake and you can see her mouth is open in horror, her hands are flung wide, her fingers open. Perhaps this attendant is desperately trying to guide her and tell her that she's made this mistake. But certainly this hand here stops her in mid-flow, doesn't it? And even the architecture helps us to understand this. We see these rolling archways that progress across this lateral composition, coming across the composition and then landing with this sort of heavy thud here, with this strong vertical of the fountain niche that Veronese constructs behind the principal figures, and this gap of space which is like a drawing in of breath, isn't it? What's going to happen next? And we're told that this was one of the key moments in Alexander's life, in our records of him, to help us understand what sort of a man he was, that he magnanimously forgives Sisygambus. He says he understands it was an understandable error. And he turns to his good friend Hephaestion and says, Hephaestion is also an Alexander, we're all Alexander. And so the tension is dispersed. So that's the crux of our narrative. And it could be quite a heavy narrative, couldn't it? It could be this moment of high tension, high drama. But Veronese manages to lighten the experience of it, doesn't he? Firstly, he puts us on the back foot slightly, because he doesn't make it entirely clear which one, who Alexander is meant to be. Are we absolutely certain that this is Alexander, who is sort of putting one hand out to ask her to pause in her words, and then turning back to say, well, you were just talking to my friend back here, but I'm Alexander, so he's stepping forward. Or we might begin to imagine that this is, in fact, Alexander, who we hadn't noticed. And it's Alexander who is pointed to himself. And his friend here in the red is trying to direct our attention to him. People have suggested that perhaps the fact that on this armour you can just make out this design of laurel leaves, the leaves of victory, the shimmering amongst the other reflections in his breastplate, and this wonderful sort of calm, assured stature of the man. It's possible, isn't it? So he's beginning to play with us, put us in the same position that the royal family find themselves in, but also just sort of maybe it's a bit of a light-hearted moment, isn't it, that we have some breathing space to begin to think that perhaps nothing's quite as it seems. There's more to discover in this painting. And there are several playful details like this, moments of humour, aren't there, that we can really enjoy. This enormous horse that we assume to be Alexander's that is set against these tiny, well, these much smaller, sort of prancing, almost like fairground horses on the left-hand side that seem to skip joyfully compared to the great stature of Alexander's horse. And you'll notice that the horses are now able to partly see through them. The paint has become more translucent over time so that we can see the fluting of the columns behind. The dog here, this wonderful wiry hound that is so full of energy, muscular power, that it's being held back by the collar, set against these playful puppies on the left-hand side being held by perhaps a court jester and other attendants. They sort of squirm and have their own life, as do some of the passers-by, people just sort of chatting and not engaging in the scene or leaning over the balustrade and talking to their neighbour. And the monkey, of course, we keep being drawn back to the monkey who is busy playing with the chain that ties him to the wall. These are the sort of slightly irreverent details that would get Veronese into trouble a few years later when he includes them in religious subjects and he's hauled up in front of the Inquisition and charged with heresy. But they're the details that we really delight in when we look at paintings by Veronese. He's also fascinated by figures that tumble towards us. He was a great supreme master of foreshortening, of showing figures that are lying along our line of sight so that we see them distorted, we see them as if they are this illusionistic effect of figures tumbling towards us. He could do this with great passion on the ceilings of frescoed palaces and churches and he could do this in oil on canvas. And so when you see a figure like this leaning towards us, almost precariously falling off balance, this again adds a sort of a circle, doesn't it? A movement around these strong standing figures. He does that elsewhere in the painting as well, up on the balcony. I wanted to think then, we have our strong narrative and we understand that there is a message so much being communicated in this painting. We can understand why a leading cultured family, noble family of Venice might commission a painting like this for their private villa. We are fairly certain that it was made for the Pisani family, for their villa on the mainland. And it allows this opportunity for a family to look back to the historical narrative, to say something about their own family, about the status of their own family, about their own nobility, about their own magnanimity, generosity and leadership. Working on this sort of scale, we want to consider how does Veronese take that story, that storytelling, and with so many characters, with so many elements and the architectural setting, these forms and colours at play, how does he bring the whole thing together so that every time we come to look at it we see more in it and we delight in it as a piece of brilliant painting. Because Veronese is really one of those artists that is remembered as a painter's painter, that is so highly respected by subsequent generations of painters, because of the way that he actually handles the paint. With a painting like this he makes us fall in love, I think, with painting, with the art of painting itself. One of the ways he does that is with lighting, with light and shade, with pulling extreme contrast in these little moments, little pauses of contrast where light is set against dark, dark is set against light. That does kind of reach out and grab us and anchor us and then creates this dance across the canvas. I think most obviously is the monkey if we start there, the way the monkey cuts this wonderful silhouette against this silvery background. But we see it again and again, don't we? We see it in the halberd here, which is quite a late addition to this weapon of this guard and the way that this dark shape, this wonderful silhouette, is set against the warm honey colours of the horses and actually the curve of the blade rhymes and echoes with the curve of the front leg of that horse. He's setting up there a moment that is all about shape and tone and dark against light. He does it with the figure of this attendant, this male figure, against the stone niche, against the fountain, which is then immediately answered by this white area of the fur, the ermine, on the Queen Mother's robes. But there are some really powerful moments as well up there that are so crucial to our reading of the painting. So if we look, if this is Alexander, if we look at that piece of bright light, that space just in front of his face, that allows us to see so clearly that area of the painting and if that was obscured in some way it would be completely lost. So this really does articulate that part of the picture. And over here as well, so contrast, light against dark, dark against light, over and over again, and of course colour. So often when we're talking about Venetian painting we are talking about colour. We're talking about a city where the best pigments were readily available. This is where pigments came in through this great trading port. And so artists like Veronese had the best pick. And we so often describe Venetian colour. Veronese was an extraordinary colourist. We can look at areas like these figures, one in front of the other. You notice what he's done is almost make a still-life arrangement of fabric, hasn't he? So he's taken the excuse that these men are wearing the robes of Roman generals, perhaps. So a green robe that has been dragged across as a backdrop. And we imagine this young boy here is a page who is holding Alexander's robe for him, his great cloak behind him. And he sort of cheekily, Veronese, shows him sort of peeking out in the same way he shows here perhaps one of Darius's sons peeking out in the same way. It's another sort of light-hearted moment, isn't it? But the way that this fabric is drawn across like a veil, like a backdrop, so that we can really enjoy these oranges and reds against green, deeper crimsons. And this passage here with the legs where we go from reds to golden yellows through to green. And he picks that up then further down, doesn't he? He takes the reds from Alexander and then he weaves them through the dresses of the two princesses. But with this loose brushwork that breaks up the form, breaks up the surface, so we get a dancing, flickering version of the reds on this side. And again with the blue, this strong heavy blue and white of the ermine broken up and sort of retold in pattern over here on these dresses. A really typical Veronese moment is I think the back of this page who leans over on the shield to get a better look at what's going on. This is pure Veronese colour, this golden yellow, these warm yellows against silvery greys. You can see he's actually set this up by painting the background in these silver greys as well, these cool greys. You have to remember that the sky originally would have been bluer and more brilliant in tone. It's painted with smalt, which has deteriorated and has become grey over time. But this combination of golden yellow, of yellow with grey, a sort of a greyed-off white. He does it over and over, doesn't he? All the way down the other end, we see it in the architecture, the column with the horses. We see it in the sleeve of the man on the far left. We see it here on the women, not just in this golden coloured dress, but in the very typical of Veronese, these gold necklaces, jewellery against pearls. So using the white of the pearls to chime with the colours in the jewellery and the dresses and the jewels. Each one of those pearls, the tiny dots, you come up and have a closer look. Afterwards, a tiny dot of white for the light passing across the surface of the pearl and this cool grey underneath each pearl, the shadow of each pearl on the skin tone. This is, as I say, a moment of pure Veronese colour. So in a painting like this, we can see all of his great powers at work. He was an artist that could take a grand narrative like this, he could take a serious subject, he could paint it on this vast scale and he could bring to it the great understanding of colour, how colour works. A real skill for using tone, light and dark to pull and push forms backwards and forwards so that we have these moments that we can alight on to understand our reading of the painting. And this feeling of this sense of playfulness, of light-heartedness, that there is a humour in the painting, there's moments that we can really delight in. And so he's often described, this is where we use this word decorative, that he creates this theatrical scene for us that is intended to entertain, to delight with its splendour, with these lavish details of silks and furs and velvets. So he's often seen as, perhaps in the past, by lovers of more austere painting, he's seen to be perhaps less serious than a Tintoretto, less powerful perhaps, that the word decorative can be used to mean something that can be more easily dismissed. So I would argue, and I hope we've found, that a piece of theatre like this, a piece of theatre on this sort of scale, this sort of drama that dazzles with its costumes, is decorative in its best sense. And as a piece of spectacle, a theatrical spectacle, I hope we feel that we are glad to be in the audience watching something like this. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening.