Short answers, pulled from the story.
Paolo Veronese, born Paolo Caliari in 1528 in Verona, was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice. He is considered one of the great trio of Venetian painters of the sixteenth century alongside Titian and Tintoretto, celebrated above all as a supreme colorist whose influence extended to Rubens, Delacroix, and Renoir.
On the 18th of July 1573, Veronese was summoned before the Venetian Holy Inquisition to explain his painting originally titled The Last Supper, which included German soldiers, dwarves, and animals alongside the biblical figures. Rather than repainting the scene, he renamed it The Feast in the House of Levi, leaving all figures intact.
The Wedding at Cana, completed in 1563, is a monumental oil painting nearly 66 square meters in size, commissioned by Benedictine monks for the San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery in Venice. The contract required lapis-lazuli blues and as many figures as possible; Veronese included portraits of Titian and Tintoretto alongside a self-portrait. The painting now hangs in the Louvre.
Veronese's works are held in institutions across Europe and beyond, including the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery in London, the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, the Prado in Madrid, the Doge's Palace in Venice, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many of his ceiling paintings and refectory murals remain in the Venetian churches and palaces for which they were painted.
Veronese was known as a supreme colorist who used bright hues with boldness unmatched in his time. After an early period with Mannerism, he developed a naturalist style influenced by Titian, featuring elaborate architectural settings, horizontal processional compositions, and luminous color rather than dramatic chiaroscuro contrasts. Critics noted his paintings conveyed little narrative emotion but extraordinary visual splendor.
Veronese headed a family workshop that included his younger brother Benedetto (1538-1598), his sons Carlo and Gabriele, and his nephew Luigi Benfatto (1559-1611). After Veronese's death in Venice in 1588, the workshop continued for about a decade, signing works "Haeredes Pauli" (Heirs of Paolo) and drawing on his surviving drawings.