The Wedding at Cana

The Wedding at Cana, painted by Giuseppe Maria Crespi around 1686, sets the first miracle of Christ at a candle-lit banquet table crowded with diners, servants and dogs — the wine steward at the centre pouring from the great jars that the miracle has just filled. Crespi, the most original of the Bolognese painters of his generation, loved to bring the sacred down into the kitchen of everyday life, and here the holy scene is played out in a smoky, convivial interior of glancing candlelight, flushed faces and sprawling tablecloth. The picture is small and jewel-like, yet the light is handled with a warmth and intimacy that look forward a full century to the genre interiors of the eighteenth century. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.