THE
WEDDING FEAST AT CANA..
(
On display inside room no 711, Denon Wing, Level 1, Louvre Museum, on the wall
facing Paris )
As one enters room no 711 of Denon Wing (Level 1)
in the Louvre Museum, Paris to see Mon Lisa, one finds a huge (6.75
metres by 9.95 metres) painting adorning the entire wall facing Mona Lisa. It looks as if
Mona Lisa is continuously looking at this work and admiring it. Known the world
over as "The Wedding Feast At Cana", this is the largest painting
displayed in the Louvre Museum, in Paris. I visited the museum thrice in 2023.
The room was always crowded obviously on account of the Mona Lisa. It is quite
challenging to capture this painting with a mobile camera on account of its
size and the crowds.
This huge painting has been done by Paolo Cagliari, known as Paolo Veronese,
who is considered as one of the most prominent painters of the Renaissance in
Venice, Italy. He lived in the sixteenth century between 1528 and 1588. He was
born in Verona (which explains his surname). He is one of the three most
important members of the 16th-century Venetian school of painters; the other
members are; Titian and Tintoretto. He is known for his large, dramatic, and
very colourful paintings.
' The Wedding Feast At Cana' combines many
elements of several different styles in art. From the Venetian colorito
philosophy of Titian to the compositional disegno of the High Renaissance -
exemplified by the work of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo, the artist has
also added one or two characteristics of Mannerism, as well as a quantity of
allegorical and symbolic features.In this painting, Jesus is shown sitting in
the middle of the table, and Maria is sitting to the left of him (one can
recognise them by their halos). They are surrounded by a mix of biblical
figures and Venetian contemporaries of Paolo Veronese, including some of the
other apostles, princes, Venetian noblemen, and servants. In total, there are
more than 130 people. The bride and groom are in the left bottom corner sitting
at the table. A servant is offering a glass of wine to the groom to taste the
new wine. The bearded ceremonial master, dressed in a green mantle, is standing
behind the servant. On the right, one can see a man pouring the wine from one
of the white stone water jars into a smaller jar. To the left of him is the
head wine taster, who approves the wine.
'The Wedding Feast At Cana' is illustrated as a
lavish Venetian feast, evidenced by the abundance of 16th-century Venetian
elements, such as the presence of Dorian (in the foreground) and Corinthian (in
the background) columns, the clothing of many of the guests, the silver
tableware, etc. One can also see the dogs, birds, parrot, and a cat.
In September 1797, Napoleon’s soldiers removed
this huge painting from the walls of the refectory for which it was made. It
was taken as war booty and brought to France and finally brought to Louvre
Museum. Due to its enormous size, the painting was cut in half, rolled up, and
transported to Paris, where it was stitched together.
The Wedding Feast at Cana' represents a story
from the New Testament. At a wedding party in Cana, Galilee, Jesus Christ
performs his first miracle by turning water into wine. Towards the end of the
wedding feast, as the wine begins to run out, Jesus asks that stone jars be
filled with water. His followers do so and they are surprised to see the water
turning into wine. It was a popular theme during the Italian Renaissance and
during the Mannerist era: famous versions of the subject include:
"Marriage at Cana" (1305, Scrovegni Chapel) by Giotto; "Wedding
at Cana" (1561, Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute) by Tintoretto;
"Marriage at Cana" (1566, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) by Giorgio
Vasari. However, unlike most conventional interpretations, Veronese transposed
the Bible story to the more modern setting of a typically extravagant Venetian
wedding.
Veronese was paid 324 ducats as his fee for doing
the painting. He was also given a barrel of wine. The huge work was
commissioned for the refectory in the Benedictine monastery on the island of
San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Helped by his brother, Benedetto Caliari
(1538-98), Veronese completed the huge painting in fifteen months.
Veronese's glowing colours include the hugely
expensive lapis lazuli blues, imported along the Silk Route from the mines of
Afghanistan; as well as yellow oranges, burning reds, and Verdigris blue
greens. Due to a recent 3-year restoration programme at the Louvre, many hues
have regained their original brilliance. It was no coincidence that Peter Paul.
Rubens (1577-1640), the greatest colourist painter during the era of Baroque
painting, owned a number of pictures by Veronese, which he kept in his studio.
The painting caused a huge scandal in the
Venetian society. Veronese's emphasis on the hedonistic aspects of a marriage
banquet, at the expense of the pious aspects of the occasion, ran counter to
the religious sensibilities of the 16th-century Republic of Venice. Undeterred
by the controversy, Veronese produced an equally contentious "Last
Supper" (1573), which so offended 'public taste' that a tribunal of the
Inquisition ordered him to make a number of alterations. He refused and simply retitled
the painting, The Feast in the House of Levi (1573, Venice Academy Gallery).
John Ruskin once wrote that from Veronese’s art, he learned that, ‘to be a
first rate-painter, you mustn’t be pious – but rather a little wicked and
entirely a man of the world’. And indeed no matter the subject, Veronese’s
paintings always exude the worldly, festive atmosphere of 16th-century Venice.
Calling 'The Wedding Feast At Cana' the “greatest
known picture in the world", Jacques-Louis David took the Veronese piece
as inspiration and made his own 32-foot-long painting, 'The Coronation of
Napoleon (1807)', which also hangs in the museum. Later on, Eugène Delacroix
wrote that he “wouldn’t miss” The Wedding Feast at Cana upon any of his
numerous visits to the Paris museum, and Vincent van Gogh considered the
Veronese evidence that painters ought to use colour toward more expressive
means.
( Avtar Mota )
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