Céfalo y Procris

This is one of Veronese's late works, from around 1584, near the end of a long Venetian career spent mostly on vast, crowded banquet scenes and church commissions. Here he takes a quieter, crueler story from Ovid. Cephalus and Procris were a married couple undone by jealousy. He owned a javelin that never missed its mark, and out hunting one day he heard a rustle in the brush and threw. It was Procris, who had followed him in secret because she suspected him of meeting another woman. Veronese shows the aftermath, the husband cradling the dying wife he has just killed by accident. The soft silvery light and loose handling are the mark of his final years, when the grand public painter turned to smaller, more inward mythologies.