The Wedding at Cana
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The Wedding at Cana
Paolo Veronese, 1563
oil on canvas, 666 × 990 cm
Louvre
The Wedding at Cana (or The Wedding Feast at Cana) is a massive painting by the Italian painter, Paolo Veronese. It is currently on display in the Louvre in Paris.
History
The painting depicts the wedding feast at Cana, a miracle story from the Christian New Testament. In the story Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding celebration in Cana, Galilee. Towards the end of the feast, when the wine was running out, Jesus commanded servants to fill jugs with water, which he turned into wine (his first miracle of seven).The piece was commissioned in 1562 by the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore (located in Venice, Italy) and completed in fifteen months by the year 1563. It hung 2.5 metres from the floor in the San Giorgio Maggiore monastery for 235 years, until it was plundered by Napoleon in 1797, and shipped to Paris.
Artwork
Though the painting is supposed to depict events in the ancient town of Cana, it is painted in a Renaissance style, with Doric and Corinthian columns surrounding an open courtyard. At the centre of the courtyard sits a group of musicians playing late Renaissance instruments (lutes and early strings). The artist painted himself in this area, dressed in a white tunic and holding a viola da gamba. Directly behind them, Jesus is seated with a halo around his head, surrounded by his twelve disciples (very common in Italian paintings of this time). Above Jesus, on an elevated walkway, several men butcher the meat of an unidentified animal. To their right another animal is also being brought to be butchered. Towards the bottom left part of the picture, there is a man pouring wine from a huge, ornate jug. Next to him stands a man studying a glass of wine. It should be noted that, though the majority of the characters in the painting are holding wine glasses, nobody appears to be intoxicated, but are healthily enjoying the feast. There are more than 130 figures in the picture. The centre of the painting is dominated by a blue, open sky, important because it opened up the room where the painting was originally hung.Sources
- Louvre visitor's guide, English version, 2004
External links
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