Perspective

Veronese, Feast in the House of Levi, 1573

“My art is joyous and praises God in light and color.” – Paolo Veronese on his work Feast in the House of Levi

Last week I went to the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, one of those stuffy museums filled with predominantly biblically themed art, in a stunningly beautiful building. The best part of the experience was that I sat for nearly three hours in front of one of the largest paintings of the 16^th century, a painting by Paolo Veronese called Feast in the House of Levi (1573), and sketched a contemporary version of the scene over several pages in my mini sketchbook, which Mitch gave me for the holidays. (One of these days I’ll learn to use the scanner at work and I'll upload some of my art to this blog…)

Feast in the House of Levi depicts a theatrical version of the story of the last supper, with Jesus, wearing a green robe, in the center, surrounded by a large number of strange people and animals who the artist captures in awkward moments as they interact with one another. The work was commissioned for the refractory of the Monastery of Santi Giovanni e Paolo to replace a version of Last Supper by Titian, which was destroyed by a fire. Nearly three months after the painting was completed, the Roman Catholic Inquisition set in and Veronese was tried for heresy because of the outrageous non-conformism of the work’s composition. Veronese was given three months to fix the work, however the only correction he made was the addition of an inscription on the top of the work, which reads, and I translate, “And Levi made Him a great feast in his own House.” In other words, Veronese cleverly ‘changed the subject of the painting,’ without actually changing the painting at all!

Sure Veronese's version of the narrative is unconventional, perhaps most obviously in that Mary is missing, but is that really grounds for a potential life sentence? To use a question my father asked me, what exactly did the church fear about this painting?

And I thought Prendergast was too traditional, or typical, imagine what the leaders of the Roman Catholic Inquisition would have thought of him! Just goes to show, perspective and historical context are everything!