The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, is a representational painting that depicts the biblical story of the Wedding at Cana, at which Jesus miraculously converts water into red wine. Executed in the Mannerist style (1520–1600) of the late Renaissance, the large-format oil painting comprehends the stylistic ideal of compositional harmony, as practised by the artists Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Wedding at Cana
In 1562, the Benedictine monks commissioned Paolo Veronese to realise The Wedding Feast at Cana as a monumental painting (6.77m × 9.94m) to occupy the back wall of the monastery's refectory, at the San Giorgio Monastery, Venice.
The musicians providing ambience for The Wedding Feast at Cana are personified by Veronese (viola da braccio), and the principal painters of the Venetian school: Jacopo Bassano (cornetto), Tintoretto (viola da braccio) and Titian (violone); standing beside Titian is the poet Pietro Aretino. (detail, lower centre-plane)
In The Wedding Feast at Cana, Veronese shows the sated guests at the nuptial banquet-table awaiting the dessert-course wine service. The guests awaiting the new, red wine include Suleiman the Magnificent, an elegant woman discreetly cleaning her teeth with a toothpick, and a woman urging her husband to ask the bride about the new red wine they have been served. (detail, left lower-quarter)
Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese, was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, known for extremely large history paintings of religion and mythology, such as The Wedding at Cana (1563) and The Feast in the House of Levi (1573). Included with Titian, a generation older, and Tintoretto, a decade senior, Veronese is one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento" and the Late Renaissance in the 16th century. Known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerism, Paolo Veronese developed a naturalist style of painting, influenced by Titian.
Self-portrait, 1558–1563, Hermitage Museum
The Family of Darius before Alexander (1565–1570). Oil on canvas, 236.2cm × 475.9 cm, National Gallery, London.
Deposition of Christ, c. 1547, Castelvecchio Museum
The Conversion of Mary Magdalene, c. 1548, National Gallery
