The Breakfast Club
Wedding at Cana
My piece has been prompted by a typically inspiring and idiosyncratic look at the Marriage at Cana by Anh Pham which gave me much food for thought.
The difference between the two paintings is give or take 100 years, a century. Yet the difference in scale is obvious and decidedly deliberate.
Paolo Veronese paints in the late Renaissance at the very height of Mannerist (1520–1600) style and expression. The composition is big and bold and utterly crowded with humanity and yet it is all contained in the largely populated space of the mise en scene of the central narrative — the Wedding feast — and the religious theme of the event within the feast that is of such great importance to the Christian faithful — the turning of water into wine is lost in the melee of Venetian opulence and grandeur.
Yet we are nowhere near Cana but in Venice but this matters little as the busy painting provides such a vast panorama of characters with so much subtle detail and depiction. It is a glorious and visually garrulous masterpiece. But it is overwhelming and the contrast between…
