The Wedding at Cana [The Largest Painting in the Louvre, Paris]

This is my all-time favorite trivia question to ask about the Louvre: What painting hangs directly across the Mona Lisa?

The answer: The Wedding at Cana (also translated as The Marriage at Cana) painted by Paolo Veronese (aka Paolo Caliari) in 1563. The Wedding at Cana is the largest painting in the Louvre; the horizontal length of the painting is an astounding 10 meters!

I am presenting a photo with people in the frame, just so you get a perspective at the immense size of this painting.

From Wikipedia:

The painting depicts the wedding feast at Cana, a miracle story from the Christian New Testament. In the story Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding celebration in Cana, Galilee. Towards the end of the feast, when the wine was running out, Jesus commanded servants to fill jugs with water, which he turned into wine (his first miracle of seven, as in the Gospel according to John).

The piece was commissioned in 1562 by the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy, and completed in fifteen months by the year 1563. It hung 2.5 metres from the floor in the monastery for 235 years, until it was plundered by Napoléon in 1797, and shipped to Paris. The painting was cut in half for the journey and stitched back together in Paris. In the post-Napoléonic conciliation treaties which pursued some restitution of looted artworks, this was not returned, and in its stead, a feeble Charles Le Brun painting (now at the Gallerie dell'Accademia) was shipped to Venice.

The scene depicts a mixture of contemporary and antique details. The architecture is classic Greco-Roman, a Doric and Corinthian columns surrounding an open courtyard walled by a low balustrade. In the distance stands a fanciful, arcaded tower. In the foreground, a group of musicians sits playing late Renaissance instruments (lutes and early strings). Tradition holds that the artist painted himself in this area, dressed in a white tunic and holding a viola da gamba, while Titian is seated opposite in red. Other people thought to be portrayed in the painting are Eleanor of Austria, Francis I of France, Mary I of England, Suleiman the Magnificent, Vittoria Colonna, Emperor Charles V, Marcantonio Barbaro, Daniele Barbaro, Giulia Gonzaga, Cardinal Pole, Triboulet, and Sokollu Mehmet Paşa.

NOTE: I will upload another LARGE resolution photograph of this painting so that you can see all the detail. Update: The large resolution photo is HERE.

References:

1) A 1992 New York Times article about how The Marriage at Cana was damaged.

Taken on: July 13, 2009

Tags:

Louvre

Louvre Museum

The Marriage at Cana

Paolo Veronese

Mona Lisa

largest painting in the Louvre « less

Groups appears in: • FlickrCentral • canon photography more » • PetaPixel.com « less

Stats: 80,516 views / 3 comments

go back

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder