The Seduction of Splendor: Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese
[IMG]
[/IMG]
The Wedding Feast at Cana. 1563. Musee de Louvre. Paris.
This 16th century work by Veronese, a late Renaissance/early Mannerist artist, portrays the Biblical story of the first of Christ’s miracles, at the suggestion of his mother, when she sees the feast has run out of wine. A simple story that Veronese expresses as a huge work engulfs the wall where it is mounted in the Louvre.
Giving you an idea of its size...
[IMG]
[/IMG]
Wedding Feast at Cana evokes the inordinate wealth and sumptuous tastes of the Venetian republic in all of its resplendent glory. Employing loose, expressive brushwork and lush colorito alla Veneziana this expansive canvas gives us a rich theatrical tableau of the artist’s time: Venice never had it so good, you could say. It was untroubled by the woes that beset the Florentine republic, earning Venice the title of La Serenissima. Venice was supremely expert at working the trade routes to the East, bringing rare spices, silk and fine artifacts to its people who were happy to be where they were and who they were. To do this Veronese employs the costly pigments that were brought to Venice from the Orient: yellow-oranges, vivid reds and lapis lazuli. We see the turbaned and bejeweled exoticism of the men and the sumptuously adorned women (one of whom holds a famed “golden toothpick" in her mouth -- for more see http://www.kcet.org/living/food/the-nosh/the-spectacle-of-renaissance-dining.html). The majestic fluted columns on the upper level suggest the architecture of Veronese’s contemporary, Palladio. No less beautiful are the sensuously veined marble columns below them. This painting celebrates that brief, shining moment, both in social history and in religious terms.
[IMG]
[/IMG]
[IMG]
[/IMG]
The mother of Christ, dressed in such drabness that she stands out among the rich flamboyance around her, is pictured sitting next to her son in the center of the painting and they bear halos in the style of that era’s religious art. Christ gazes out directly at the viewer -- part of the scene and yet apart from it. Above him a butcher is cutting meat while more is seen arriving from between the upper columns to the viewer’s right. Art historians believe that the meat is lamb and is meant to be a religious reference to Christ as the Lamb of God.
The credenza at left is an important feature in this art, in terms of its social history. For this is where the excessive display of the father of the bride’s wealth (silver works of art, plates and silverware which was a new addition at that time) would have been located. These alliances were of course important in the pursuit of the Venetian Republic’s further exploits into finding, and consolidating, wealth into a few Venetian families -- key to domestic stability in the city’s government and culture.
A wine taster in a magnificent white satin robe with gold trim, in exaggerated contrapposto, studies the color of the wine in his beautiful wide mouthed glass -- Veronese’s tribute to the art of glass making that Venice is rightfully proud of.
[IMG]
[/IMG]
The musicians in the center are visual artists of the day playing music, suggesting a harmonizing of the two arts. That is an old Titian on the violincello, Tintoretto and Veronese himself play the violas, and Bassano is shown playing the flute.
[IMG]
[/IMG]
The magnificent Salukis in front of the musicians are a treat. Look more closely, though. In the entire painting, I count four dogs, one cat and one green parrot. Do you?
[IMG]
[/IMG]
It was a Benedictine Order that originally commissioned this painting for the refectory wall of its monastery in one of the Venetian islands. And aptly so, as hospitality is a major dictum of that Order. It was from there that the painting was cut in half, rolled up and carried off to Paris by Napoleon’s soldiers in the late 18th century. By 1815 when Napoleon was defeated, the painting was deemed too fragile to make the trip back to Italy. It had been stitched back together but has suffered from several mishaps and war related events over the years. The one and a half ton picture remains in the Louvre today, just across from Leonardo’s Gioconda.
Because of the picture’s original placement, the artist may have refrained to showing food on the plates (only showing platters of fruit...a nice inclusion of quince, a symbol of marriage, appears prominently), fearing that it would be considered an example of the deadly sin of gluttony. Instead, the feast’s opulence was implied by the silverware and folded linen napkins, a stylishly fashionable “latest thing” in Venice at that time. Of course, the Bible story gets overwhelmed in Veronese’s interpretation... the scriptural account would suggest a smaller event with simpler food, taking place in a dusty town in Galilee.
Art philosopher Arthur C. Danto observes that the Veronese color values disappeared from painting almost immediately after him in favor of the technique of chiarascuro that “defines the the Old Master style of the Baroque that swept Europe after the Counter-Reformation...the strategy was to heighten feeling by enabling the light to fall from an almost mystical source upon the figures it touched. Against these ambitions, Veronese’s art was like walking outdoors, under blue skies...”
Veronese’s work influenced the colorist artists from the Romantics through to Matisse. Delacroix wrote that the artist was “the only one to have caught the whole secret of nature.” The irony is that this scene of bright blue skies and puffy clouds with soaring birds was, in fact, the setting sun on an era of art. But it is surely a brilliant one at that.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thank you CTyankee! I LOVE it! Wow! I can only imagine the horrified looks when they dropped it! Imagine the SOUND it made? Probably like a thunderclap!
These are the kind of things that make me remember why I got a degree in History, never will know it all or even a fraction - but what we do learn keeps us childlike imo in our amazement and marvel.
I'm still stuck at WOW.
Starry Night had me blubbering once. I felt like I GOT it, and then it left me.
To me art and the arts are necessary for life. Without beauty and emotion there is no reason to exist. One day I'm going to take a trip to see all the art that I love in person. I'll probably spend most of the time tearing up too. So exciting. Art soothes the soul.
Back in the 70's -- one day I decided to go to the Rice Art History Library
where Dominic de Menil had relocated, in order to study the paintings of
Bosch and Brueghel. As I was poring over the pictures, I was also reading
the annotated critical section in the back of the book where comments from
art critics could be perused.
There was one comment on The Marriage Feast at Cana that was just hilarious,
made by someone with the equally hilarious name of Phlange Murphy, who said
that Bosch's painting was "the psycho-sexual manifestation of the circumcision
ritual." This was, of course, the ... ahem ... "Freudian" interpretation. Lol
I just couldn't not remember that one!
Can you see the white roses that I think were tossed by the leaning woman whose arm is stretched out, upper right? I saw that white thing sticking out on one of those fluted columns and had to get out my magnifying glass to see that it's flowers.
There's another falling directly below that one and the seated fellow dressed in yellow is bent backwards looking up at it, while the guys on either side of him are also gazing upward. Nothing is visible on the table, but I like to think that a third stem of roses must have plopped directly onto yellow-turban guy's plate, ha!
I wonder if he added those subtle symbols for Mary as an afterthought, once he realized how many (frowned-upon) critters he'd already painted on his picture. The roses do seem to be just stuck in there.
CTyankee, this is the sort of painting that I could crawl right into, especially now learning from you how incredibly big it actually is.
Thanks again!
To further explain my previous comment, I'm not disparaging the grandeur displayed in the painting. When I say it looks like a theatrical production, I mean it literally looks like how such a scene would be set and staged were it to be presented in a box-stage (3-walled) theater - which is really interesting because that kind of stage didn't exist in the 1500's. It just struck me how much the painting looks like it could a theatrical production when the artist had no frame (ha!) of reference.
Thanks for the post.
Thank you for the nice compliment...Maybe I'll ask Skinner for a little "elevation honorarium." 
A welcome learning moment, and what a delightful break from negativity, squabbling, and cynicism. 
I always loved doing research and I find such new things in it. So trust me, it is a delight for me as well...