The word feast has multiple meanings: It can refer to an elaborate celebratory meal often accompanied by entertainment, or it can signify a cyclic religious observance honoring a holy person.
The tradition of communal feasting can be traced to the early Neolithic period. In ancient Greece, there was a special feast called a symposium that was an integral part of society. Subsequently, feasting was prevalent in the medieval and Renaissance world and has survived in different forms to the present day.
Feasts that feature special meals are found in the Bible, with the Last Supper and the wedding at Cana among the most prominent examples. In medieval psalters (books featuring biblical Psalms), the wedding at Cana was a popular illustration. Feast depictions of holy days can be found in books of hours (the sibling manuscript to psalters that contain prayers to be said at the canonical hours of the day).
‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’
The Louvre’s most visited gallery is its Salle des Etats; in addition to showcasing the “Mona Lisa,” the remainder of the room features paintings by Venetian artists. Its walls are a deep midnight blue to emphasize the Venetian paintings’ palette of bright and rich reds, yellows, oranges and greens.
Opposite the “Mona Lisa” is another masterpiece, Paolo Veronese’s “The Wedding Feast at Cana,” which is the museum’s largest painting. It was commissioned by the Benedictine monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice for a wall of their refectory. Built by the great architect Andrea Palladio, the room was used for communal dining in the religious institution. There was a tradition in other parts of Italy of decorating refectories with biblical feast scenes, but it only became popular in Venice in the mid-16th century, with Veronese leading the way.
Completed in just 15 months, “The Wedding Feast at Cana” was greatly admired in its day, and in 1797 Napoleon’s soldiers seized the painting and shipped it to Paris, where it has remained ever since.
Veronese (1528–1588) is renowned for his bravura paintings of pomp and circumstance. Whether depicting religious or secular scenes, he often theatrically arranged his compositions to feature a crowd of opulently dressed figures in sumptuous surroundings and rendered them with dazzling color. Commissions from emperors, kings, and patrician families comprised altarpieces, portraits, history paintings, and complex decorative cycles for villas and palaces, including the Doge’s Palace. A specialty of Veronese was the depiction of large-scale feasts, and “The Wedding Feast at Cana” is the most famous example.
The painting is of an episode from the Gospel according to St. John. During a repast at Cana, which in this artwork resembles 16th-century Venice, Jesus miraculously transformed water in stone jars into wine. Veronese places Christ along the painting’s vertical central axis and his mother next to him, showing them with halos so that they can be located amongst the 130 figures. Biblically attired disciples sit beside the pair.
The wedding guests are seated for the final banqueting course, the traditional fruit and nuts, which in this work includes quince—a marriage symbol—grapes, dates, and sweetmeats. On the far right, servants pour and examine the liquid that is now wine, while on the far left, the wine is presented to the bridegroom who, along with his bride, is dressed in lavish contemporaneous clothes. Throughout the canvas, details are beautifully rendered, from finely crafted gold and silver plates, glassware, food, musical instruments, and sumptuously patterned brocade and silk fabrics.
The Venetian ‘View Painter’
The most acclaimed and productive era of his career was between 1730 and 1752. The online biography of Canaletto at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. states that he brilliantly “captured the light, the life, and the buildings of Venice in these years with a perceptiveness and luminosity that established his reputation as one of the greatest topographical painters of all time.” These paintings often record Venetian public ceremonies. “Venice: The Feast Day of Saint Roch” is from this period, dating to around 1735. It shows one of the customary August 16 celebrations of St. Roch, the patron saint against plagues.
In this painting’s narrative, a feast day mass held in honor of St. Roch at the church of San Rocco, on the right, has just ended. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a religious and charitable organization, is the central building in the painting’s background. With his brush, Canaletto captures its stonework, sculpted columns, and colored marble inlays. He enlarges the square in front of the Scuola in order to accommodate a large crowd. Canaletto’s removal of some real-life buildings gives one a clearer view of the procession.
Emerging from the church are Venetian dignitaries and foreign ambassadors. One of the standout figures is the doge, the elected head of the Venetian state, who is at center left of the composition. He wears an ermine-lined golden ceremonial robe and an attendant carries a matching golden umbrella over his head, shielding him from the summer sun. Indeed, shade is provided to the entire group by a canvas awning. Canaletto’s depiction of this structural feature creates an undulating horizontal line that emphasizes the movement of the procession’s figures.
Other distinguished figures in this scene are dressed in luxurious clothes and their heads are topped by white powdered wigs, which are depicted with energetic brushwork and accented by thick paint. To the right of the doge stands a representative of the papal embassy wearing a black cape with a hood, while the French ambassador is to the left of the doge. In commemoration of the plague and St. Roch, the men all carry small bouquets of sweetly scented flowers, called nosegays, which were used to conceal unappealing smells during the epidemic.
A crowd watches this stately procession. Many of these figures are painted at an angle, creating the perception that one is part of the crowd, too. In their online description of the painting, The National Gallery in London, which is the depository of this work, writes that “Canaletto developed a particular way of painting large numbers of faces—he used highlights on the forehead and cheeks to show how each head was angled in relation to the light, with dots for the eyes, chin and nose.” Many of these figures have individualized facial features and personalities as expressed in their outfit and pose: There is a vendor with weighing scales, a beggar, a potential pickpocket and visitors from the Near East. “Venice: The Feast Day of Saint Roch” is Canaletto’s only portrayal of the doge’s participation in St. Roch’s feast day, although there are other Venetian ceremonies of which he painted multiple versions.
Paolo Veronese’s interpretation of a celebratory banquet featuring a divine miracle and Canaletto’s depiction of a contemporaneous saint’s day ceremony illustrate feasting in all its glory and grandeur. They highlight the magic of Venetian art and the city itself.
