The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese

The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese

A miracle at a Venetian party

Nearly ten metres wide, the largest painting in the Louvre, and the eye goes first to the wrong things: the marble loggias, the dogs, the dwarf with the parrot, the servant pouring from a jar and discovering it is wine. Then to the musicians in the foreground — by tradition Veronese himself in white on the viola, Titian in red on the bass, Tintoretto and Bassano beside them. Only then, straight up the middle, past the carver on the balcony working a lamb, to the one still figure at the table, looking out: Christ, with his mother beside him, at someone else's wedding.

That is Veronese's argument. The miracle happened at a feast, and the feast was real.

San Giorgio to Paris

Painted for the refectory of the Benedictines of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, where it filled the end wall. Napoleon's troops cut the canvas horizontally, rolled it, and shipped it to Paris in 1797; it was never returned, and in 1815 a painting by Charles Le Brun was sent to Venice in its place. It hangs opposite the Mona Lisa.

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole canvas, 10,068 pixels wide, in its 3:2 format.

Sources: Musée du Louvre, INV 142 · Wikidata Q185255 · Wikimedia Commons