Paris Louvre Wedding Feast at Cana

Welcome to the Salle des Etats, the largest room in the Louvre. Most visitors come for the Mona Lisa, then they turn around. On the opposite wall hangs the museum's greatest canvas, Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana. Nearly 7 meters high and almost 10 meters across, 130 figures, the largest painting in the Louvre. It was made in 1563 for the Benedictine monks of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Palladio had given them a new refectory. They asked Veronese to fill the end wall, to make the dining hall seem to open into another world. He did not paint a village in Galilee, he painted Venice. Columns of marble, silk and brocade, a banquet of princes, Christ's first miracle, water turned to wine, staged as a Venetian wedding. Look to the center. Christ sits quietly, in rose and white, beside his mother. The feast roars around them. Servants pour from great jars. The host has no more wine. Then the color changes in the glass. In the foreground, musicians play. Some say the man in white is Veronese himself, the man in red, Titian. An hourglass stands between them, time running, even at a feast. Napoleon's troops rolled the canvas in 1797 and sent it to Paris. After Waterloo, Venice wanted it back. France kept it, in exchange for a work by Lebrun. It has hung here ever since. So do as few visitors do. Give the Mona Lisa two minutes, then give this wall ten. You are looking at a city that once ruled the sea, and at a miracle served at table. This has been a Free City Tours for Google Guide. Until the next landmark.