Ep 4 Paolo Veronese Convinto in Casa di Levi

Hello everyone and welcome to Academia delle Belle Arte a Venezia. Welcome. You are standing here with me in front of Pablo Veronese's Cena alla Casa di Levi. You can see from the sheer size of this thing, it's gigantic. It takes up the entire wall. It is very easily much bigger than myself. This painting is currently in the Galleria dell'Accademia located right next to a cycle of the life of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice, which is very much depicted as if it takes place in Venice as these paintings are being created. This painting, currently in the Galleria dell'Accademia, it actually originally was painted for the refactory of the Dominican monastery of Santissimi Giovanni e Paolo. Interestingly, it wasn't just a monastery, it was also one of the hospitals of Venice. It is actually still the main hospital of Venice to this day. It was meant actually to replace many of the paintings by Titian, that burned, unfortunately, two years earlier. Originally, actually, it was a Last Supper painting, which you can see here in the central bay of the arches, the three arches that you can see, which interestingly happens to be the only arch that is actually completely exposed to air. The entire concept of paradise here is only accessible by this arch. This was originally a Last Supper painting. As we can see, this painting in general, it's filled with so many actions, so much is going on, there's so many people here. This is very, very far from Michelangelo's Last Supper, which is very simplistic, showing exactly what is going on in the Last Supper scene. What's also interesting is that we have the figures of everybody in this painting, as I said, like the room next to it. This is actually depicting people who lived in Venice at this time. This is very much something that you would have seen in Venice at this time, in the 1570s. As a result, this painting is filled with Germans that you can see here, Ottomans who you can see here, Venetians who you can see here. You can see especially this man's clothing here. As a result, this painting is so much a celebration for so many people. This is actually quite representative of what would have been Venice at this time, what a banquet in Venice would actually have looked like. Another thing is this painting was done in the 1570s, so let's back up here in history, what's going on in Europe in general at this point. We have the Reformation is going on in the north, north of Italy, and the Counter-Reformation happening as a result, and we get Michelangelo's Last Judgment scene so full of tension. What's interesting is that actually this painting, even though it is so joyous, even though it is so full of beautifully filled moments, it actually also became an issue for Paolo Veronese because he was brought in by none other than the Inquisition for questioning over this painting. Now, the thing is that the Last Supper is very central to church ritual. The thing is the inclusion of people like the Germans, who are these two German guards, who he has in the painting, even though it really is a reflection of Venice at this time, the church didn't like the idea of the incredible reality of this painting. As a result, what the painter did, he actually, the original myth says that the painter didn't change a thing, he just changed the name of the painting. Well, that's not entirely true. If you look at the actual results of the trial, and then the results of the current painting, for example, in the original trial, only the apostles were seated at the table. He claims that there are only 13 people, Christ included, sitting at the table. According to modern counts of the guests at the table, there are two guests that are unaccounted for at the time of the trial. There are also a few stances that are changed. He had to change some things in order to change the narrative of the painting, as one would expect. One of the things that he also did is he included this inscription that you can see here, that says, Fecit de Covimanium Levi Luca capitolo 5, which is, in essence, renaming the painting to this other moment in the Bible, not so incredibly central to everything the church does in its rituals, as the Last Supper would have been. The architecture. This painting is also considered one of the last paintings of Renaissance classicism. Now, let's talk about this. So, as I explained, Veronese is very much known for his love of splendor, which we can definitely see in this painting. We can see all the clothes, all the fabric, the people, the talking, the laughing. The fact that Peter, next to Christ, is actually cutting a leg of lamb But what's also interesting is that this painting was very much created not only with Venetian people, but in a Venetian setting. So, let's talk about this. So, the thing is that Veronese used this setting to also exemplify a contemporary of his, Palladio, who was a great architect of not only these islands, but this region. Palladio built many, many churches. That are very, very famous, as a result, on these islands. He believed very strongly in Vitruvian neoclassical architecture that used very specific geometric forms and equalities of geometric weights and sizes and shapes. And as a result, we can see in this painting, actually, that it does mimic some of the churches that Palladio was conceiving of and was building at the time. And, for example, the way that an altar is built, interestingly, we can see in the balustrades here of these two stairs, which is not the first time that Veronese uses this concept when he is painting a very important scene like this. The idea of two stairs going away from it isn't just a device that he can paint more characters in or a device that he can use. It actually is meant to go along with church architecture because in the middle here we have this space where the balustrades end, you can see here from these parentheses. And as a result, and this is very much a very beautiful type of focal point that Veronese has created in order to create his Last Supper scene, you can see it goes directly into this table here. And this table very obviously would have represented the altar, just like altars that we can see, for example, in the Church of San Giorgio here with these balustrades. It is really not very different with the central opening there and the balustrades coming in to going up to what would have been the altar, the consecrated body and blood of Christ. Thank you so much and see you next time.