Christopher Gray visits an unmissable Veronese exhibiton at the National Gallery

Veronese fell foul of the Inquisition with a depiction of the Last Supper which featured a dog in a position more suitably occupied, it was thought, by Mary Magdalen. (Possibly the notion was she might have assisted in post-prandial entertainment.) Crafty in the face of adversity, the artist made no changes but simply renamed his picture — long thought one of his greatest — The Feast in the House of Levi (1573) This vast canvas (555 x 1280cm) is too large to have been brought from its home in Venice’s Gallerie dell’ Accademia to be part of the not-to-be-missed blockbuster Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery. The same is true of other outsize works.

These include The Marriage Feast at Cana (1562-63), the largest painting in the Louvre, which gallery director Nicholas Penny “didn’t even dream of asking [for],” he told the Daily Telegraph, “because we wouldn’t be able to fit it in a plane, on a truck, through the door and on the wall — it’s gigantic”.

Mighty canvases are still to be seen, however, among the 50 exhibits. They include The Martydom of St George (c. 1565), more than 14ft in height which was generously lent by the church of San Giorgio in Braida, Verona. This is “arguably Veronese’s finest work”, in the opinion of the show’s curator Xavier F. Salomon, who is captured mid-interview beneath it in the photograph on the right.

Viewed close up, the picture has an impact that cannot be denied as George, ignoring a priest’s entreaties to worship a false god in the shape of a statue of Apollo beside him, fixes his eyes on the celestial vision of the Virgin and Child above.

Other photographs on this page illustrate another aspect of Veronese’s genius that greatly appealed to me. Many critics praise him for his accurate depiction of faces and fabrics; rather fewer remark on his facility with fur, specifically the fur of the animal that gave him trouble with the Inquisition.

One writer who did note the artistry he brought to painting dogs was John Ruskin, Oxford’s first Slade Professor of Fine Art. Of today’s critics the only one to mention the matter in the reviews I saw was the Evening Standard’s Brian Sewell, who is very well known as a dog lover. He will indeed be addressing a sold-out session at the Oxford Literary Festival tomorrow afternoon on this very subject.

A huge admirer of dogs myself, I was captivated by the range of animals on view, some shown in a working role, others paraded to stress the elevated status of their owners, but the majority, I would guess, simply pampered pets.

In the last category, surely, comes the charming pooch (see left) in the foreground of The Supper at Emmaus. Xavier Salomon writes of the picture in the catalogue: “The overall effect is opulent and majestic, the portraits superb and in the detail of the two little girls playing with a dog Veronese reached a level of poignant harmony that was unprecedented.”

Another of my favourites is found in Venus, Mars and Cupid, executed late in the artist’s career in about 1580. Salomon writes that “the grouping of Venus, Cupid and the small dog is a splendidly conceived composition”.

Take my advice. Go and admire.