Marriage at Cana

Veronese, Paolo (1528-1588)


Item type:
painting
Date of creation:
1562-1563
Height:
677.0 cm  (266 9/16 in.)
Width:
994.0 cm  (391 5/16 in.)
Technique / Medium:
oil
Place of creation:
Venezia (Italia)

Additional titles

Les noces de Cana

    Item location

  • Musée du Louvre
    [Museum inv. no.: 142]Restauré de 1989 à 1992 avec le ménénat d'ICI France.

Description

Wedding feast at Cana. At upper left, a lute player and what appear to be three singers are perched on a balcony. A consort is playing in front of the table where Jesus is seated. Two tenor viols are being played sideways, and a violin and a double bass viola da gamba are also played. There are at least three other instrumentalists. The figures behind the left-most viol player are obscured, but a sackbut and folded trumpet are visible. Another musician (between second viol player and violin player) is playing an instrument that appears to be a cornett. There appears to be an open music book on the table in the foreground, around which the consort is sitting. It is assumed (Hartt, 1973: 562) that the four figures visible in front are depicting Titian (left, playing bass viol), Veronese (right), Tintoretto (behind Veronese), and Jacopo Bassano (middle, playing treble viol).

Iconclass

42D25
wedding feast, wedding meal

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Sackbut (trombone) [4364]
Tenor viol [3591] (Two tenor viols)
Violin [3573]
Cornett [3868]
Double bass viol [3598]
Lute [3394]
Natural trumpet [4419]
Treble viol [3594]

Musical works

illegible music notation

Image URLs

image link 1
Musée du Louvre
image link 2
Detail of musicians at center foreground
image link 3
Detail of lute player and singers at upper left of painting
image link 4

Bibliographic references

Bassano, Peter. "A second miracle at Cana: Recent musical discoveries in Veronese's Wedding feast", Historic Brass Society Journal 6 (1994) 11-23. RILM 1994-4510.

Gétreau, Florence. "Le concert instrumental des Noces de Cana de Veronèse: Interrogations pour une lecture méthodique", Revista de musicología 16/2 (1993) 985-988. RILM 1999-8288.

Phillips. Tom. Music in art through the ages (Munich: Prestel, 1997) 50-51. RILM 1997-11597. ISBN 3791318640.

Hartt, Frederick. History of Italian Renaissance art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 562. ISBN: 0810901838.

Valentini, Anna. "Musicians in early seventeenth-century banqueting scenes in Ferrara", Music in art 38/1-2 (2013) 37-48. RILM 2013-8535.

Rowland-Jones, Anthony. "The minuet: Painter-musicians in triple time", Early music 26/3 (August 1998) 415-431. RILM 1998-01844.

RIdIM record id

398