Art History: The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese

And on the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus was called and his disciples of the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto him, They have no wine. These are the opening lines of chapter 2 of the book of John from the Christian Bible. John is a non-synoptic book, meaning that its stories and content are vastly different from the rest of the books in the New Testament. Modern scholars attribute the original coined Greek gospel of John to be written by a single community centered in Damascus, or Ephesus, between 90 and 110 CE. The version of the narrative I just read was a modified rendition of the English translated King James Bible from 1611 CE, removing some of the archaic, early modern English phrasing. The parable is known as the Wedding Feast at Cana. The story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, a miracle where Jesus turned water into wine, was the inspiration for this piece. It is a rather ambitious work, containing 130 human figures as well as numerous animals, mainly cats and dogs. It is a classic oil-on-canvas painting, utilizing a mannerist art style in vogue at the time of the painting's creation in Venice in 1563. It is quintessentially mannerist, utilizing the highly ornate Venetian backdrop, also portraying idealized, graceful figures with elongated poses, and the precarious use of movement and striking skylight make it stand out even more. The painting was created using oil-based pigments on a cloth canvas. The canvas was sewn together from many strips of cloth. In Venice, specifically oil-based paints on canvas are a must because the damp, lagoon-like climate of Venice would fade the colors of a painting if the pigments were applied directly onto plaster. In this way, Venice differs from many other parts of Italy. Now, speaking of symbolism within the art piece, the preternatural or supernatural presence of Jesus and his miracles are brought out to the mortal attendees of the feast. The invited guests are sent back in time 1,500 years, or rather, biblical figures are brought to early modern Venice. What is immediately striking about the piece is the opulence of the banquet clashing with the austere presence of Christ who taught against material wealth. Another notable feature of the painting are the party guests. Many of the guests at the main table have been postulated to be real historical figures, contemporary with the Vernese, as we will see. The venue is fictional, but supposed to be set in Venice and influenced by the work of famed Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. So you may be asking, who is Paolo Vernese? Moreover, who commissioned this artwork and why? Is it supposed to represent a contemporary event? And if so, what event would that be? Also, who are all of the historical figures that we can spot in the painting? I'll also be giving a rundown of the chain of possession, a.k.a. the provenance of this artwork. But before we begin, don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button for more content like this. Without further ado, let's get started. First, we'll be answering the question, who was Paolo Vernese? Vernese was born Paolo Spezzapreda in 1528 in the city of Verona, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice. His father, Gabriele, was a stonecutter, which is an artisan and quarryman who crafts stone for use in buildings and architectural projects, hence his last name Spezzapreda. Which is an occupational surname, means stonecutter in the Venetian language. Vernese went by many names professionally throughout his career as an artist. In fact, he was known more so as Paolo Cagliari for most of his career in Verona. Once he moved to Venice, being an outsider, he was referred to as Vernese, which indicates his origins in Verona. So as not to confuse him with someone local with a similar name. Vernese got his start in painting in 1541 when he first apprenticed under Veronese painter Antonio Badelli. He was Badelli's apprentice until 1544. Paolo had worked for Badelli from the ages of 13 to 16. Fast forward to 1551, at the age of 23, he gained his first state commission art piece by the noble Justiniani family of Venice, who claimed descent from the Roman emperor of Thraco-Illyrian descent, Justinian I. Justinian was renowned as the Eastern Roman emperor who reconquered many parts of the Western Empire after the fall of Western Rome in 476 CE. Vernese's commission was an altarpiece painting of the Holy Family for the Justiniani's church at San Francisco della Vigna. After success with his piece, Paolo would be the client of many members of the Justiniani family, including Justiniana Justiniani, who he painted alongside her wet nurse at the balcony of Villa Barbaro in 1560. According to French writer and art connoisseur Francois Caste, one only needs to look at a painting by Vernese to see that he was very confident and understood his own genius. In his 1912 book analyzing the works of Paolo Vernese, Caste remarked on the wedding at Cana, specifically saying, A painter less thoroughly sure of himself would have made a sorry mess of this feast. Vernese has produced a composition that is admirable for its balance, in abounding, charming details and unexpected and picturesque episodes that do not in the least detract from the effect of the painting as a whole. By 1705, monks at the monastery had to restrict tourists from coming in to view it due to the crowds that would gather to come see it. British writer William Michael Rossetti, younger brother of the famous 19th century pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, said that it is impossible to look at this picture without astonishment. In his 1895 memoir, William noted that, for a time, beginning in 1860 to around 1871, his brother Dante had thought that Vernese's wedding at Cana painting was the greatest picture in the world. Before Dante, French neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David did the exact same thing some 60 years earlier in 1807. Narratives like those explain the legacy of the painting and its splendor, but how did the artist begin this piece and what was the impetus for making it? Well, on June 6, 1562, the prior of the Benedictine monks of the monastery of San Giorgio Magori contracted Paolo Vernese, a rather well-known Venetian painter who, as we said, had gotten state commissions in the past to produce a painting of the water-to-wine miracle from the Bible. The painting was to be hung high on a wall at San Giorgio's newly built refectory, designed by master architect Andrea Palladio. The painting would be hung behind the head of the table of an abbot. For context, a refectory is essentially a dining hall for monks. In observance with the rule of St. Benedict, monks dining in the refectory would have been austere and silent, contemplating religious teachings while gathered eating at the table. Now, according to the contract between Vernese and the Venetian Benedictines, Vernese was given a monumental canvas measuring 67 square meters. He was compensated with an initial payment of a barrel of wine and was also given a free pass to take all of his meals at the refectory itself. Upon the painting's completion, he was additionally given 324 Venetian ducats. Ducats were the currency of Venice. They were in coin form only and were 98.6% gold. Keeping in mind that one ducat is equivalent to approximately $150 or £105 a day, he would have been paid around $48,000 or £34,000 for his work. Before beginning his work, Vernese was given a few stipulations by the monks. Firstly, he should finish the painting within a year's time. He should only use the colors they had allotted him and he should utilize the color ultramarine, which is a deep blue, as one of the painting's base colors. Keeping in mind, Vernese had several other works he was painting along with the wedding at Cana. This includes a painting known as the Martyrdom of St. Primus and St. Felicianus, which depicts the executions of early Italian Christian martyrs St. Primus and St. Felician, killed during the Diocletian persecution of Christians in the late 3rd century CE. Along with that, another concurrent work was the Head of St. Michael, which was a commission for the Church of San Francisco at Lendinara near the Venetian city of Padua. Another is St. John the Baptist Preaching, which he possibly made for the Palazzo Torlonio in Rome. Switching gears a little bit, you'll recall that a big question that I alluded to earlier is, who is portrayed in the painting? I had said that several real historical figures are thought to have been included in this piece. Artists, art historians, and connoisseurs have been speculating for centuries the identity of the figures, specifically those guests seated at the table on the far left. To quote British art historian Percy Herbert Osmond, writing in his 1927 biography of Paolo Vernese, if Vernese had really intended this composition to accurately illustrate the opening verses of the second chapter of St. John's Gospel, it would have to be registered as a failure. But such was not, in the remotest degree, his intention. He has painted here this sort of banquet that was a common occurrence of Venice in that opulent age. To silence the not-too-exigent scruples of his monastic patrons, he had to give his picture a scriptural title, so he called it the Wedding Feast of Cana. But he evolved the surprisingly original version of the Gospel narrative. St. John tells us that the mother of Jesus was there, and that Jesus was called, and his disciples. Paolo adds a peek in detail that invitations had also been accepted by Alfonso Diablos, Mary Tudor, presumably the sister, not the daughter, of Henry VIII, the Sultan Suleiman I, Vittoria Colonna, who stirred a platonic love in the heart of Michelangelo, and is here using a toothpick, the Habsburg Emperor Charles I, and other notables in church and state, and in the Republic of Letters also. Her Piazza Artino is here too. In fact, the artist seems to have had in view a sort of League of Nations banquet. At the other end of the table, a number of the monks are believed to have been portrayed, while Benedetto, Paolo Vernese's brother, stands etudianizing in front towards the right. In the central foreground, supplying the music, are four men more famous for their skill in the art of painting than in that of music. Paolo Vernese himself plays the viola. Opposite him, Taishin is performing on a double bass, Jacopo Bassano has a flute, while Tintoretto, immediately behind Paolo, completes the orchestra. Other notable figures include Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, English Cardinal and the final Catholic Bishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pohl, and the Countess of Fondi in Triato, Giulia Gonzaga. According to both Francois Crest and Princeton University, from their 1904 publication Masters in Art, Eleanor of Austria, the real-life Queen of France and wife and widow of Francois I, is portrayed here as the bride and Arganese-Italian statesman, Alfonso Diablos, is the groom. What's truly interesting about this is Vernese's choice of wedding participants and guests, if the attribution of the identities of these figures are accurate. As Diablos, the groom in this painting is a sworn enemy and thorn in the side of the French, i.e. Francois of France, and the bride in this painting, Eleanor of Austria, the Queen of France, as well as the Ottomans, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and Sokollu Pasha. Historically, Venice, being a medium-sized Italian city-state with fiefs and vassals, played both sides of the intense rivalry between King Charles V and King Francois I. Maybe their dual portrayal was a way to signify peace between these two factions. Though, on the other hand, maybe this portrayal really was a way to humiliate the French by having the king give his own wife in marriage to the warrior who defeated him so many times in battle. Diablos fought the Ottoman-French alliance on many occasions, beating them many times as he did in the Habsburg conquest of Tunis in 1535. He also lost to them on select occasions as he did at the Battle of Sarasol near Turin in 1544, two years before his demise. Thanks to the work of art restorers, we also can learn some intricate details about some of the more obscure figures. The restoration attempts of the painting from 1989 to 1992 were near-catastrophic. In 1992, the painting was spattered in rainwater, which linked from an air vent. Also during that time, as they were raising the artwork higher on the wall, it was situated. The frame gave out and the massive painting collapsed onto the ground, puncturing parts of the canvas. While examining the canvas, restorers noticed this out-of-place balding man, dressed somberly in full black, was painted onto a stray piece of paper and tacked onto the canvas at the last minute. This man could have possibly been the abbot of the monastery who demanded to be included in the painting. He was given his new position during the completion of the painting and was added in at the last minute. He is portrayed with a scowl, which shows what Veronese truly thought of him. Now, after identifying some of these figures, you may be asking, were the portraits of these figures taken from life? Did Veronese observe and paint some kind of actual historical banquet and just include Jesus in it? The answer is no, primarily because many of the people featured in the painting were dead at the time of the painting's creation or posthumous additions. That is, if they are even portraying those figures at all. Deceased figures possibly portrayed include Francois I, Eleanor of Austria, Marie Tudor, Alfonso Diavolos, Charles V, Vittoria Colonna, and Ottomans Suleiman and Succula, and the artists Tintoretto, Benedetto Veronese, Paolo Veronese himself, Titian, and Jacopo Bassano. Though a more accurate assessment, the painting can be seen as a composite portrayal of banquets which were happening all the time in Venice, keeping with the styles and customs of the day. Let's now get into the provenance of this piece. Who owned it since its creation in 1563? As I stated before, the painting was owned by the monastery of San Giorgio Magori in Venice from 1563 to 1797, when Venice was conquered by France's First Republic under Napoleon Bonaparte during his Italian campaigns, wresting control of it from Habsburg Austria. To backtrack a little to 1793, when the Bourbons were deposed, a palace of theirs called the Louvre was opened to the French public as the Musée Francais. The Louvre would house the great former fortunes of the French royal family as well as the best artworks of recent memory. American historian Cynthia Saltzman quotes passages from letters sent between French government officials during this time in her 2021 monograph, Plunder, Napoleon's theft of Veronese's feast, saying, In Italy, the Directory would soon give Bonaparte another charge to plunder. The resources which he will procure are to be dispatched towards France. They wrote on May 16, 1796, Leave nothing in Italy which our political situation will permit you to carry away and which may be useful to us. The French Republic needed funds and its army of Italy required equipment. Everything is lacking and especially transport. Christoforo Selesetti, the French government's commissioner, had written to Lazare Carnot, a director in charge of the military, in February from Nice. As Saltzman stated, France was stretching itself out and fears came that it was stretching itself too thin. Though Napoleon had a plan. He famously ordered lists to be made of portraits, sculptures, and curiosities, so he had a looter's itinerary. Yet he had a point. Patronage of the arts, the French people would be enriched, empowered, and be granted enormous pride. Veronese's wedding at Cannes, as well as many other paintings, were taken as war booty by the Formio, ratified on October 17, 1797, which Napoleon had forced the Habsburg Austrians to sign, brought the first coalition of the French-Italian campaign to an end. In the public version of the treaty, France nominally ceded possession of the city of Venice to the Habsburg Austrians, while including secret articles in the treaty giving France the ability to call all of the shots in the background. As we can see here in this instance, France had imperial ambitions. Napoleon looked to art and priceless cultural heirlooms as a key to political success and imperialist aims. By stripping polities like Venice, Parma, Rome, and Naples of their art, Napoleon was taking their heritage, prestige, cultural continuity, and pride away. He then concentrated them in Paris. Because of the painting's colossal size, when it was stolen away from the monastery in Venice, the French cut the painting in half and rolled both sides up into tubes and stuck in a crate for easier transport. It was then taken to Toulon in the south of France and then to Arles. It was placed on a boat in a collection with other stolen artworks taken from Rome. By the next summer, the painting was at its final destination, the Louvre in Paris, where it was stitched back together At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, France, as the losing party, was forced to sign treaties which repatriated a few of the stolen artworks they had taken. During the aftermath of the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, the victorious British general, the Duke of Wellington, demanded that France return its stolen art. Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova headed a repatriation campaign which returned many works of art. Yet despite that, repatriation of the Wedding at Cana was rebuffed by French diplomat and art curator, the Baron Dominique Vivant-Dinon, who lied to the Papal States, Austria and Britain, by saying that the piece was too fragile to transport back to Venice. He assuaged them further by giving up possession of the 1653 Charles Le Brun work, priced at the house of Simon the Pharisee. The Wedding at Cana would not be moved from Paris until 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War when it was taken to undisclosed locations in the south of France for safekeeping. The same precautions were taken again in the 1940s during World War II. Today it is still located at the Louvre in a big gold frame in room 711 on the first floor of the Dinan Wing. Today a facsimile of the Wedding at Cana also hangs, as its predecessor did, in the refectory of San Giorgio Magore in Venice. So, in conclusion, Paolo Veronese was the son of a stonecutter born and raised in Verona, which was then a part of the serene Venetian Republic. Veronese created one of the greatest and most iconic pieces of art in the entirety of the Italian Renaissance and the entirety of the European Renaissance. It was an oil-on-canvas painting contracted and made for the Benedictine Monastery on the island of San Giorgio Magore in Venice. Artists from all across Europe and the world were in awe by the sight of it, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jacques-Louis Davy, Henri Matisse, and Vincent van Gogh. Dominique Vivant Dinan and Napoleon Bonaparte looked to use the piece as a political driver for their imperial ambitions for France. Dinan refused to return the Wedding at Cana when asked by the rest of Europe, following French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Finally, the painting hasn't gone anywhere else since then. This is a testament to the French state's need to keep Paris a cultural capital of the world, and more specifically, Europe. Anyway, what are your guys' thoughts? Do you like this painting? What do you think of the idea of politicizing artwork? Can you think of examples of any other instances where people have done this? Please feel free to sound off your questions, thoughts, and concerns in the comments and let me know what other video topics you'd be interested in seeing. As always, this has been Kay with Lost Libraries and, until next time, peace.