Obra "As Bodas de Canaã" / "Nozze di Cana" de Paolo Veronese Retorna ao Refeitório da Basílica de San Giorgio Maggiore em Veneza, Itália, Mais de 200 Anos Depois - Artigo
In September
2007, to coincide with the opening of the Dialoghi di San Giorgio - this year
on the theme Inheriting the past. Traditions, shifts, betrayals and
innovations - a
remarkable
event was held in Venice. Organised in collaboration with the Louvre, the event
concerns the large work entitled The Wedding at Cana - now in Paris -
painted
by Paolo
Veronese for the refectory of the Benedictine monastery. After an absence of
210 years, The Wedding at Cana ‘returned’ to its original setting in
the Palladian
Refectory on
the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, thanks to the creation of a ‘second
original’, i.e. a facsimile on a one-to-one scale, created thanks to the most
sophisticated
reproduction
techniques. The facsimile has all the elements of the original: the lines,
nuances of colour, and even the flaws in the supporting canvas and signs of the
wear and tear
of time. Moreover, thanks to meticulous documentary and historical
reconstruction work and a virtual restoration, it is also possible to see what
some
20th-century
reworking of the painting covered up.
The facsimile
was made with technology developed by Adam Lowe, a British artist and founder
of Factum Arte,a workshop at the cutting-edge of reconstructing and
reproducing
works of art. This project challenges the theory that the ‘aura’ of a work
decays. A
physically and aesthetically perfect copy has been created and placed in the
setting for which it was originally conceived and made in an ‘accord of ideas
and
design’ between
Veronese and Palladio. Part of the overall restoration of the monumental
complex of San Giorgio Maggiore, this operation has the specific aim of
reestablishing the original aesthetic harmony and so make this artistic
‘marvel’ by Palladio and Veronese become completely comprehensible. The
remarkable operation is paradoxically meant to bring us closer to the authentic
aura of the refectory, irremediably lost on 11 September 1797, when the French
commissars of the Napoleonic army decided to include The Wedding of
Cana among the works
to be sent to
Paris as war booty.
Now 210 years
later, on 11 September 2007, the fac-símile of The Wedding of Cana was placed back in the Palladian refectory and
unveiled to the public during the opening
ceremony for
the exhibition The Miracle of Cana: the originality of re-production.
Organised in
collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, Paris, the project was implemented
thanks to support from Enel, Casinò di Venezia, Consorzio Venezia Nuova,
Fondazione
Banco di Sicilia, and SanPellegrino.
This project
consists in creating a full-size facsimile of Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding
at Cana to be hung in the original setting: the Palladian Refectory on the
Island of
San Giorgio
Maggiore.
The work was
created by Adam Lowe, a British artist and founder of Factum-Arte. An innovator
in reconstructing and reproducing works of art, the company has become a
reference point
for large cultural organisations for which the conservation and showing of art
works and their digital recording are vitally important issues. Work began in
November and
December 2006 with the scanning of the painting in the Musée du Louvre.
The recording
was effected by a colour scanner rebaptised 'Cana', specially designed by
Factum Arte for Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana. Mounted on a telescopic
mast, the scanner only used LEDs to produce cold light. The painting was
scanned at a distance of 8 centimetres from the surface. The data recorded with
this system then became the initial master for producing the facsimile to be
installed in the Palladian Refectory.
After scanning,
the colours were chosen with the aid of a Colour Reference Book, a tool created
by Factum Arte.
Each section of
the painting was referred to a section of the book, and the colour samples –
the outcome of a direct comparison with the surface of the painting – are
precisely fixed
by corresponding points in the book.
Acquired in
this way, the data is translated into printable sections (100 x 180 cm) for
various trials on texture and finish.
Once the colour
has been defined, the next stage is printing the facsimile, which lasts for
several months and ends with the processes of fixing, filling, retouching and
glazing.
The project was
completed in August 2007, when the facsimile of the painting was hung in the
Refectory at the Giorgio Cini Foundation.
From September
2007, the work has been on public view.
The Wedding at
Cana is an exceptional work for several reasons. Firstly on account of its
size: the oil painting is almost seven by ten metres. Other remarkable features
include the
extraordinary breadth of the composition,“praised by Vasari on, its innovation
in the iconographic rendering of the evangelical subject, and the presence of
a large number
of leading personalities, some of whom are clearly contemporaries of Veronese.
One of the
stories from the life of Jesus, the episode is taken from the Gospel of St
John. This first miracle took place in the village of Cana in Galilee, during a
wedding feast. Jesus and his disciples arrive at the feast with Mary. When the
host runs out of wine, Mary begs her son for help. Jesus orders that six large
jars be filled with water so that he can bless them. On tasting the contentes of
the jugs, the host discovers they have been turned into wine. The conventional iconography
usually sets Jesus in the middle of the scene, with the guests arranged around the
table, but at times the attention is focused on the gesture of blessing the
water or tasting the wine. At times the bride and groom wear crowns, in keeping
with the Greek Orthodox tradition. This theme was rare in medieval painting but
became much more popular from the 15th century on in wall decorations for
refectories, together with the Last Supper.
The story of
the Marriage is inextricably bound up with the history of the island
of San Giorgio Maggiore, and especially with one of the most striking places in
the monumental Benedictine monastery: the Refectory (or Cenacolo) – the
grandiose room built to a design by Andrea Palladio, and completed from
1560-1562.
“It's a pity
that you could not have spoken beneath the light and colour of one of the most
prodigious colourist miracles of Venetian painting – the Wedding at Cana by Paolo
Veronese. Here it was in ideal harmony, or rather inspired symbiosis, with the
composed architecture designed by Palladio for this Refectory. Veronese the painter,
Palladio the architect, and André Malraux their poet...”
This was how
Vittorio Cini complimented André Malraux on his enlightening introduction to
“The Secret of the Great Venetians”, a speech given to officially open a
series of
seminars entitled “The Venetian Civilisation of the Baroque Age”, held at the
Giorgio Cini Foundation on 17 May 1958, just when General de Gaulle took power
in
France.
The story of
the Wedding is inextricably bound up with the history of the island
of San Giorgio Maggiore, and especially with the Palladian Refectory (or
Cenacolo).
One witness to
this association was Damerini, who in his authoritative study L’Isola e il
Cenobio di San Giorgio Maggiore wrote that "in the Refectory the
principal
decoration
became the canvas by Paolo Caliari called Veronese (1520-1588), who had been
summoned on 6 June 1562 to fill the whole wall opposite the entrance to the
room. This marked the beginning of the great painter’s collaboration with
Andrea [Palladio], who soon took him to work in the Barbaro family villa at
Maser."
There was
undoubtedly a deep understanding between Palladio and Veronese (the work may
even almost considered a joint project). Indeed it was at San Giorgio that
Veronese revealed “his genius as an illusionist in interpreting architectural
space, as he staged the sacred theme in a theatre setting through the dynamic arrangement
of the planes to make architectural wings (unequivocally Palladian) with a
background of a clear sky opening up the walls, and a very careful
orchestration of the movements of groups of figures, while the whole is bathed
in triumphant luminous hues” (Damerini op. cit.).
This
masterpiece was so celebrated at the time that people went to San Giorgio only
to see it. Cosimo III de' Medici went so far as to claim that it alone was
worth a trip to Venice. Sovereigns and princes throughout Europe asked for a
copy and many came to the island for the sole purpose of asking permission from
the Benedictines to reproduce the painting. This generated so much interest that
the friars, to avoid being disturbed by all these demands, convened the chapter
on 17 December 1705 and decided that henceforth no one would be granted permission
to reproduce the painting.
It was also the
lasting chorus of praise and marvel that induced Napoleon and the French to
seize the work in 1797 as war reparations. Having been cut up into several parts
for the purpose of transport, the canvas was sent to Paris to be re-assembled
and shown at the Louvre (where it still hangs today) on 8 November 1798.
Despite the
agreements in the Congress of Vienna, the work was never to return on the
pretext it was difficult to transport, and compensation was given in the form
of a painting by Le Brun, notwithstanding Canova’s vehement protests.
Canova was not
the only person who tried to bring the Marriage at Cana back to San
Giorgio Maggiore, although he was the most authoritative. Vittore Branca, as
himself often reminded, unsuccessfully engaged in diplomatic actions to
re-establish the “former historical aesthetic and critical unity of the
artistic collaboration between Palladio and Veronese at San Giorgio Maggiore.”
But despite repeated failures, he never gave up his ambition to heal the wound
and restore the “aura” to the Palladian refectory (of which Veronese’s work was
an essential part) was never abandoned.
Indeed, the
wound periodically bled again, as was significantly described by Alessandro
Bettagno. Thus during the work to install the exhibition Paolo Veronese, Drawings
and Paintings held in 1988 by the Cini Foundation, he noted that the
subject was brought up on several occasions. “We have often heard a bitter complaint,
a complaint that has almost become a kind a refrain: ‘what a pity that the
large canvas of the Wedding at Cana is no longer in the Palladian
refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore’. If the huge painting had remained in its natural
home, it alone might have created a kind of ‘permanent exhibition’ offering the
opportunity to interpret the work in the Palladian setting for which it had
been conceived. It would thus have been possible to admire and understand the
true essence of a masterpiece, part of a harmonious whole. Now dismantled, that
whole can no longer be recomposed as an inseparable historical, aesthetic and
critical element in Veronese’s association with Palladio and vice-versa.”
Bettagno’s
resigned attitude may be explained by na awareness that having works of art
stolen during wars returned was far too controversial a theme to be solved only
by good will supported by reasons of aesthetic appropriateness. In this case it
is precisely the “historical element” that was the insurmountable obstacle to recomposing
the admirable “harmonious whole”.
But if there
was no way round this historical element (the right of the Louvre and the
French government to own the work can no longer be called into question), the
aesthetic and critical elements are a different matter. In an age when we can
achieve a totally perfect technical reproduction of everything (from human
beings to Works of art), the aesthetic and critical harmony of the Palladian refectory
can now finally be re-established. Today technology enables us to do what at
the time of Bettagno’s claim (1988) was not yet possible: reproduce the
Marriage at Cana with such accuracy that no
individual in
the world could distinguish the original from a copy with the naked eye.
The
unprecedented high quality of facsimiles today means that even the flaws in the
canvas and damage caused by time to the materials can be reproduced to na approximation
of around a thousandth of a millimetre.
This raises the
issue of the aesthetic theory concerning the relation between original and
copy, a subject on which many feel Walter Benjamin said the last word.
In his The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the German philosopher
introduced his celebrated notion of “aura”. Before the advent of the age of
mechanical reproduction (therefore around the end of the 19th century and the
early 20th century), according to Benjamin, the work of art enjoyed a status of
authenticity and uniqueness. A work of art was an original unique piece (it
could not be produced in series) authentic,
unrepeatable
and therefore was meant to be enjoyed only in the place where it was kept. This
aura of the work, its authenticity and unrepeatability, making its aesthetic
enjoyment
unique, is what Benjamin called the “aura”.
In the case of
the Wedding, the aura of the work of art is thus everything we have been
describing above. But now in the age of the reproducibility of works of art, we
find that works of art are subject to the process of the “decay of the aura”.
Indeed, a painting is all the more unique, the weaker and more repeatable the
photograph or any other
image
reproducing it.
