Amid so much that is distracting, Veronese never loses command over his subject or his brush, "restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless energy; reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength; veiling, before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention with a rod of iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and subduing all his powers, impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity." Of the life of Paolo Veronese few incidents are related. He was the son of a stone carver, and having shown a propensity to painting was apprenticed to his uncle, a mediocre artist. In his native city the works of Cavazzola and other Veronese masters were before his eyes. After executing some commissions in Mantua and Verona, he went in 1555 to Venice, which was henceforward to be his home and the scene of his triumphs. He soon began to rank with Tintoretto, who was nearly twenty years his senior, and with Titian, then in his eightieth year. He entered into a competition for painting the ceiling of the library of St. Mark, and executed the commission with so much power that his very rivals voted him the golden chain which had been tendered as an honorary distinction. He visited Verona in 1565, where he then married the daughter of his old master; and in 1560-61 he went to Rome in the suite of Grimani, the Venetian ambassador. With these exceptions he remained in Venice, full of work and honour. Upon his death his two sons and his younger brother, Benedetto, continued the work of his studio, signing the works which they produced in common as "heirs of Paolo Caliari Veronese."