In those discussions, this painting was suggested as a much more interesting piece than the Mona Lisa displayed near it and often overshadowing it. I’d never heard of it before (as someone not at all artsy or classical), but I love the attention to detail in it.
What other interesting details are there? Are there any interesting cultural references that wouldn’t be obvious to someone not steeped in the antiquities and Christianity studies?
For example, some things I noticed & questions that I have about them:
Who is that bearded old man in the pink shirt & blue toga, seated two left of (who I presume to be) Jesus? He’s wagging his finger angrily at something/someone, and a man in a turban behind him is making a “whoa there, hold on a sec” gesture.
At the far lower left, there is a blonde woman with a bright puffy face, wearing a dress that looks like a French dinner plate (white and blue floral patterns). She is one of only 3 people I saw, other than Jesus and a shrugging man in white at the far right, to look directly at the viewer and “break the 4th wall”, so to speak. Is there any significance to that?
In the far lower right, under the standing white vase, is that… a cat? Is it tugging at the vase? Why does it look so blurry and shadowy compared to the rest of the painting, almost like it’s a werewolf?
And what is the man in blue above that vase doing…? Is that… some sort of poop throne with a face and a chute that leads into the vase…? Feeding the cat?
In the center on the balcony above Jesus, it looks like they’re… butchering…? some raw cut of meat? Is it normal to be doing that during a banquet, instead of having it already cooked and served? There’s also a couple of porters bringing in some other dead animal from the right, maybe some sort of deer or dog or hyena thing.
At the upper right, on what looks like a very steep roof/column, there is a boy in a light blue shirt & tan shorts that’s hanging onto it with one arm and the side of his legs. Either he has incredible balance & strength or maybe that’s just a weird perspective?
What other interesting things are there? It’s really quite a fascinating painting
Just a Heads Up… That Seadragon link siezed up my shit for 25 minutes, forced me to do a hard re-boot/restart, knocked me off the internet, shut down my adblocker… God knows what else.
In between Jesus and the finger-wagging man is Mary; you can tell it’s her because she has a halo around her head (though it’s not as bright or intense as Jesus’s is). She doesn’t look particularly happy.
Also, I wonder which figures are supposed to be the bride and groom? It’s a wedding reception, after all!
In the wedding banquet proper, the holy guests and the mortal hosts have exchanged their social status, and so Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and some of his Apostles, are seated in the place of honour of the centre-span of the banquet table, whilst the bride and bridegroom sit, as guests, at the far end of the table’s right wing.
Something to understand about how to look at the painting: we are seeing it differently here than as the artist conceived it. Remember, the painting is huge. In person, you’re below it, looking up at an angle, as it towers above you. This significantly changes how you perceive it. Our eyes “read” those people at top right very differently when we’re seeing the whole painting straight on, looking at a photographic reproduction on a computer screen, compared to the full size work hanging on a wall.
Classical artists were very conscious of the perspective of the viewer. Consider the unusual proportions of Michelangelo’s David, for example; if you really focus on how he’s put together, he seems a little cartoonish. But then reorient your imagination so you’re standing at the statue’s base, dwarfed by its scale — or go see it in person — and you’ll get why he’s designed that way. And going back further, in Greek temples, the columns are usually subtly distorted to correct for how we misperceive their proportions as we look up at them. Very smart folks, those classical creators.
Point is, what may seem like weird angles and spatial relationships as we look at the painting with our modern perpendicular gaze are revealed as intentional choices when we see the piece the way we’re supposed to.
I read someplace that Michelangelo’s David was intended to sit along the roofline of a church, so above the viewer and that’s the reason his head is out of proportion.
Many of the faces in the painting look surprisingly modern. The guy at the far right in green and gold could be Joe Pesci’s more contemplative brother.
There’s a guy on the left of the top line of folks, between two guys in green, who looks just like my brother.
It does look like a cat - it even has tabby marks on the head. But the nose looks weird and the paws are definitely weird. I can’t make out what it is grabbing. If you look above that area you will see a very tiny dog on the table. It looks like it could get hurt in this crowd. I hope someone is keeping an eye on it.
I think that’s just some sort of wooden stool. It has a cushion on it.
Ditto. That is tantalizing Granted, I should not be collecting more books at this stage in my life. Rather the opposite.
But that’s irresistable. Library/ILL for sure. TY!
But I was just studying Aquinas’s Catena aurea of that specific passage (the wedding feast at Cana) to examine some of the tradition explicating each verse. Not a few weeks ago.
And now this painting shows up! Yeah, I used to have a faculty pass to the Louvre (secret staircase!) but never spent time around this painting over a few years.
(buys immediately)