The True Story of Paolo Caliari 's The Wedding at Cana

Welcome to theweddingatcana.org, an academic initiative devoted to sharing and spread, both among the scientific community and general public, the results of research resulting from several years of academic studies.

Our multidisciplinary research team is dedicated to documenting the findings revealed by X-rays carried out in the 1990s on the monumental canvas The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Caliari, Veronese.

These investigations arise from our original proposal about the identity of one of the participating musicians as the Neapolitan chapel master Diego Ortiz.

However, X-rays revealed an even greater surprise: the person hidden under Ortiz's face turned out to be the Venetian master Giorgio de Castelfranco, known as Giorgione, in memory of whom Titian wears a second gold ring.

You can visit our Portfolio where you will find a classification of the various research projects published by category.
The findings obtained have also been disseminated in conferences and master classes held at higher education institutions (higher conservatories, congresses ... ) recorded (mainly in Spanish) and can be viewed from this website, new playlist and its Youtube Channel.

The detailed study of the compositional and underlying elements (X-rays) of the canvas, has allowed us to elaborate a scientific and solid proposal of the various changes that the Veronese made until the last moments of his delivery.

The papers, books, and multimedia materials that we present here include these findings as well as a coherent narrative of them. These works have been presented in various scientific publications and, due to the multiple branches that derive from them, our team has also opted for digital publication under the Creative-Commons license in order to facilitate their dissemination to the scientific community and interested public.

Una misa fúnebre para Giorgione en “Las Bodas de Caná”. Más allá del consort Original

Giorgio de Castelfranco, llamado Giorgione, era el personaje central a cuyo alrededor Paolo Caliari estructuró en origen la disposición del grupo instrumental de Las Bodas de Caná. Para ello se sirvió de un diseño basado en un consort vocal junto a Giorgione y su laúd, acompañado de sí mismo al clavicémbalo. La escena incluía también algunos laúdes “silenciosos” sobre su propio instrumento.

The wedding at Cana: the forgotten history of a famous canvas

How Paolo Caliari buried the great master Giorgione for a second time under the colors of his palette, and the swings of the protagonists of the monumental work that marveled Europe for centuries.
The work recounts, in a literary tone, the rugged and laborious remodeling of the central scene of the painting from its beginnings to the providential arrival of Ortiz, along with the vicissitudes and misadventures suffered by its author.

Veronese and Diego Ortiz at San Giorgio: Profane Painters and Musicians and Sacred Places

Bilingual Edition: Spanish-English
International Conference of Music Patronage in Italy from the 15th to the 18th-Century. Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. Lucca, Complesso Monumentale di San Micheletto. 16-18 November, 2019.
https://www.luigiboccherini.org/

The five consort of Veronese's The Wedding at Cana

This work is the synthesis and conclusion of a slow and laborious process isolating one by one all the visible elements in the central scene, occupied by the group of Venetian painter-musicians, both on the canvas and in the X-rays published by the Louvre Museum in the early 90s. The process finally yielded the articulated detail of six consecutive linked formations, all of them instrumental except the original, a “sung” mass, typical of Venice, which consisted of a quartet of voices accompanied by the author on the harpsichord.

Il Veronese and Giorgione in concerto: Diego Ortiz in Venice

We are proposing that the Spanish musician Diego Ortiz is represented in Paolo Veronese’s famous mannerist picture "The Wedding at Cana". Specifically, we suggest that he is the person who seems to be making comments to Veronese, as the conductor of a viola da gamba ensemble. Presumably, the author of the picture represents the musician as one of the most significant contemporary exponents of this instrument. We derive our proposals and conclusions from the few available biographical data of Diego Ortiz, his portraits in his treatise and in Veronesne’s canvas, and from an analysis of the repeated and unsuccessful trials in the literature to identify this personage.
We also suggest that the Venetian painter Giorgio da Castelfranco (named Giorgione), was represented in the initial design of the painting at the position of Ortiz and then painted over.

Tintoretto, i Grimani, and Alessandro Vittoria: Artists and patrons in Veronese ‘s Wedding at Cana

Alessandro Vittoria portrayed a large number of relevant contemporary characters in stone there in Venice, and at the same time, he was also portrayed by distinguished artists and friends. One of them, Paolo Caliari, included him in his formidable Wedding at Cana (1563) canvas, along with tens of Venetian and international authorities, renowned local Venetian artists, as well as ecclesiastical authorities and influential people associated to the Benedictine Order. For several decades, Alessandro was a regular collaborator to the author of the canvas and some of those depicted in there: We think that he could be the fifth commensal placed to the left of Jesus Christ.

El Segundo Consort: Laudes.

El gigantesco lienzo del Veronés para la congregación de San Giorgio Maggiore acabó siendo, durante los quince meses que tardó en completarse, una empresa bastante accidentada sobre un andamio muy transitado: había sido encargado por los monjes venecianos pocos meses después de comenzar la última convocatoria del Concilio de Trento, y fue entregado dos meses antes de su conclusión.

Giorgio de Castelfranco y los violines perdidos del Veronés. Tercer y Cuarto Consort

La causa de la aparición de instrumentos “de tránsito” (violines) en brazos del Veronés antes de la resolución del consort definitivo como uno de violas da gamba, hay que buscarla entre las prácticas de las escuelas musicales de los monasterios y confraternidades venecianos durante las décadas anteriores a la elaboración del lienzo. En torno a 1530, las cofradías de la ciudad comenzaron a sustituir el tradicional “sonido medieval” de las formaciones mixtas (cuerdas pulsadas y frotadas), por un nuevo consort con violines que ofrecía un “sonido moderno” y más potente, y que por su manejabilidad permitía a los músicos participar en las numerosas procesiones y funerales de la ciudad.

As we have mentioned before, this scientific work began in 2016 documenting the presence of Diego Ortiz and Giorgione in the great canvas of Veronese, but at that time nothing made us suspect the marvelous work that awaited us after this discovery and that is why we want to invite, from here, everyone to take part of this research.

Publications

The successive changes that occurred in the central musical scene (Consort 1 - 5) of the painting, according to our model, can be more fully understood in the publication The Five Consort of Veronese's The Wedding at Cana, 1563. This small book (bilingual: English-Spanish) is offered to the reader as a quick reference guide.

Il Veronese and Giorgione in concerto: Diego Ortiz in Venice. We are proposing that the Spanish musician Diego Ortiz is represented in Paolo Veronese’s famous mannerist picture "The Wedding at Cana". Specifically, we suggest that he is the person who seems to be making comments to Veronese, as the conductor of a viola da gamba ensemble.

The wedding at Cana: the forgotten history of a famous canvas. [Download PDF]. How Paolo Caliari buried the great master Giorgione for a second time under the colors of his palette, and the swings of the protagonists of the monumental work that marveled Europe for centuries.

Veronese and Diego Ortiz at San Giorgio: Profane Painters and Musicians and Sacred Places. [Download PDF]. Bilingual Edition: Spanish-English. International Conference of Music Patronage in Italy from the 15th to the 18th-Century. Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. Lucca, Complesso Monumentale di San Micheletto. 16-18 November, 2019. https://www.luigiboccherini.org/

The Second Consort: Lutes. Veronese's gigantic canvas for the congregation of San Giorgio Maggiore proved to be, during the fifteen months it took to complete, a rather eventful undertaking on a busy scaffold: it had been commissioned by the Venetian monks a few months after the start of the last session of the Council of Trent, and was delivered two months before its completion.

Tintoretto, i Grimani, and Alessandro Vittoria: Artists and patrons in Veronese ‘s Wedding at Cana. Alessandro Vittoria portrayed a large number of relevant contemporary characters in stone there in Venice, and at the same time, he was also portrayed by distinguished artists and friends. One of them, Paolo Caliari, included him in his formidable Wedding at Cana (1563) canvas, along with tens of Venetian and international authorities, renowned local Venetian artists, as well as ecclesiastical authorities and influential people associated to the Benedictine Order. For several decades, Alessandro was a regular collaborator to the author of the canvas and some of those depicted in there: We think that he could be the fifth commensal placed to the left of Jesus Christ.

Paolo Caliari Veronese: Minerva, Geometry and Arithmetic, 1551.