Veronese lost no time in returning to Verona, but, however flattering the esteem with which his compatriots surrounded him might be, he was not long in finding that the limited scope afforded by his native city was too narrow for his activity. He had a boyhood friend, Battista Zelotti, a painter like himself, and also like himself tormented by dreams of glory. Together they quitted Verona and betook themselves to Tiene, in the duchy of Vicenza. Here they had the good luck to meet a man of discrimination, in the person of the paymaster-general Portesco, who entrusted them with the decoration of his palace. The two friends apportioned the work between them; while Zelotti, who had studied at Venice under Titian, undertook the fresco painting, Veronese decorated the intervening panels in _grisaille_, or gray monochrome. The result of this friendly collaboration was a complete series of paintings, of great diversity: hunting scenes, banquets, dances and numerous subjects borrowed from mythology or from history, the _Loves of Venus and Vulcan_, the _Heroism of Mucius Scaevola_, the _Festival of Cleopatra_, and a remarkable _Sophonisba_. This work in common was not without profit to Veronese. Zelotti's manner closely resembled his own; they both show the same qualities of colouring and composition, and the same broad and facile touch. They collaborated once again on fresco work in the home of a certain Eni, in the village of Fanzolo, in the neighbourhood of Trevise. After this they separated, Zelotti going to Vicenza, whither he had been summoned, while Caliari betook himself to Venice, the Promised Land towards which he was impelled by his ardent desire for glory. When he arrived in the Most Serene Republic, Caliari was not yet twenty-five years old. We have no reliable document regarding these first years of his residence there, nor even of the impressions produced upon him by the opulent and magnificent city. But these impressions are easy to conceive. To anyone so sensitive as he to externals, Venice must have seemed enchanted ground. How could he have failed to be dazzled, in acquainting himself with that gorgeous city, enthroned upon the Adriatic, like a pearl in a casket of velvet? With what joyous eagerness his colour-enraptured eye must have rested upon those white marble palaces, moulded and filagreed in arabesque, those churches paved with precious mosaics, those quays swarming ceaselessly with a picturesque and motley crowd of Armenians, Greeks and Moors, spreading the sun-bathed pavements with a glittering display of spangled ornaments, turquoise-inlaid cutlery, and multicoloured fabrics. [Illustration: PLATE III.--THE HOLY FAMILY (In the Musée du Louvre)