The Marriage Feast at Cana
Early Finales del siglo XVI - XVII century. Wash, Pencil, Grey-brown ink on paper.Not on display
In this elegant drawing Christ appears seated at the center of the table at the marriage feast in the village of Cana in Galilee, when to the distress of their hosts the wine ran out halfway through the festivities. Christ points with his right hand at the stone jars in the center foreground -only indistinctly drawn with the point of the brush- the contents of which he transformed from water into wine. Particularly well realized is the demure figure of the bride seated at the right end of the table; also well conveyed is the general atmosphere of bustle amongst the servants on the left of the composition as they deal with the crisis caused by the shortage of drink. The setting has more in common with a meal in a sixteenth-century Italian palazzo than one in Galilee during the early years of the first century. The composition owes much to those of Tintoretto´s several representation of the Last Supper, while the energetic pace of the line is suggestive of the drawings of Veronese (1528-1588). Worthy of remark is the pentiment in the face of Christ, showing it in two positions: one looking in the direction of the bride; and the other back at the servant who approaches him from the rear with the news that the wine has run dry. Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 3069; New York, Fort Worth and elsewhere, 1976-77, no. 27), a somewhat analogous drawing by Palma Giovane, must date, from its style, from later in the artist´s career (Text drawn from Turner, N.: From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Art Services International-Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 152).