Paolo Veronese is one of the most prominent painters of the Venetian school. The canvas “Marriage in Cana of Galilee” depicts Christ at the wedding feast in the Galilean settlement of Cana at the time of his first miracle: when the wine ran out, He, at the request of the Mother, turned water into it. Among the guests were several students.

The community of the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore ordered a painting for this story from Veronese in 1562. The master worked on it for more than a year. In the refectory of the monastery, for which the canvas was created, it hung until the conquest of Italy by Napoleon. To make it convenient to transport the canvas, the French cut it in half, after which they sewed it in Paris.

Freely interpreting the biblical story, Veronese turned it into a Venetian wedding celebration. The New Testament event is presented in luxurious architectural “decorations” such as could not have been in a Galilean village at the dawn of the Christian era. They are reminiscent of the buildings of Andrea Palladio, a late Renaissance architect. Some of the figures are dressed in historical clothes, while the costumes of others amaze with the luxury and splendor of a completely different era. Biblical heroes are surrounded by the artist’s contemporaries. According to legend, the musician in white clothes in the foreground of the picture is the master himself.