The Marriage at Cana
Gerard David, 1500
The Marriage at Cana depicts the miracle recounted in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus turns water into wine during a wedding feast. David sets the scene in a contemporary dining room: the bride and groom sit at the head of a table surrounded by guests in fashionable Flemish dress, and a cleric appears at a window. Only Christ and the Virgin Mary wear halos, which sets them apart from everyone else. The bride, with her hair hanging loose to her waist, stands out, since respectable women usually wore their hair this way only at weddings. The kneeling figures at either side are donors, and other people in the scene are probably portraits of their relatives. The commission is attributed to Jean de Sedano, a Spanish merchant based in Bruges, who had earlier ordered a family triptych that is also now in the Louvre. The work blends a sacred story with the portrait of a specific family, a common practice in Flemish painting of the period.
- Painter
- Gerard David
- Date
- 1500
- Medium
- wood, oil paint
- Dimensions
- 100 × 128 cm
- Museum
- Louvre Museum, Paris
- Movement
- Early Netherlandish painting
- Genre
- portrait, religious art
- Depicts
- Marriage at Cana, meal
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