Paul the Venetian is the Chohan, or Lord, of the Third Ray. He is an Ascended Master whose final incarnation was lived as Paolo Veronese, the great Italian artist of the Venetian school. He lived in the sixteenth century and many of his great works, which hang in London, Paris, Madrid, Washington and New York, are of religious scenes.
He portrayed episodes in the life of Christ in such works as The Marriage at Cana, The Presentation in the Temple, The Via Dolorosa, Christ and the Centurion, The Resurrection, and so forth. One painting, entitled The Holy Trinity, he completed after his ascension and it hangs in his retreat, the Château de Liberté, which is in southern France. The retreats of the Ascended Masters are on the etheric plane but they are often congruent with a physical focus. The physical focus of beloved Paul's retreat is a château that is maintained by a private French family.
Veronese’s ornamentations soon led to dramatic experiments with new colors. In his quest for beauty, he freed himself from the dull browns and grays of his predecessors by modeling in full light, making his already graceful figures iridescent and nearly transparent. He developed glistening pastel hues of azure, coral, pearl, lilac and lemon yellow that startled and fascinated his patrons. He loved deep, bold contrasting colors, and he combined shades never used before—ruby and rich velvety green, pink and emerald, aquamarine and violet. As if to stress that true beauty endures forever, Veronese searched for and discovered a technique of pigment preparation that is unsurpassed in preserving paint. His magnificent colors still radiate brilliantly today, compared with the fading ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and even Tiepolo’s now-deteriorating frescoes painted two centuries later.
Veronese was a spiritual revolutionary who waged battle against the forces of anti-life in the arts. He saw beauty as the most powerful catalyst for enlightenment, and he endowed the figures of Jesus, the apostles and saints with lifelike expressions. By associating them with easily identifiable places and things, he put them within the reach of the common people. The master transcended the traditionally flat, lifeless and grim aspects of medieval art; his biblical scenes and historical subjects, festivals and pageants were refreshingly executed with joy and sweeping grandeur.
