Ceiling paintings

The picture shows paintings by Veronese in the gilt wooden ceiling of the Sala del Collegio.

A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a “quadro riportato,” which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. If a picture with the perspective of a panel painting is shifted to the ceiling, it is called a “quadro finto” (fictitious picture). In such a case the painted architectural framing is replaced by a painted or three-dimensional picture frame.

Another solution for ceiling decoration was realized by Veronese in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. He simply inserted his complex program of pictures structured in different sizes and shapes into the massive coffering system as true canvases.