The Marriage at Cana Mattia Preti

Many of you will be familiar with Veronese’s vast depiction of the marriage at Cana which has pride of place facing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. In the National Gallery in London there is a far less well known version by Mattia Preti, a Baroque painter, which intrigues me.

The dominant structural line of the painting is the edge of the table end, running almost horizontally. This line was my clue. Tables had immense social significance: high tables and low tables; sitting above the salt or below it – these denoted your place in the hierarchy. But in this painting the real action, indeed the miracle itself, happens below the level of the table, below the notice of the guests. It takes place in the bottom right-hand corner, where a servant, his wrinkled brow caught in a shaft of light, is pouring the miraculous wine.

Next to him, is another servant, by far the most clearly and colourfully delineated figure in the painting. His back is towards us, soiled and bony, with signs of the occasional beating perhaps, while his sinewy arm and hand, strong with toil, grasps the pitcher. His bald head glistens, the rim of his ear pokes towards us, while his nose and wrinkled brow a catch the light in a way that Caravaggio would be proud of!

Above the table the guests mingle, chatter and gesticulate, unaware of the turning point of history taking place beneath the tabletop. Mary and Jesus are depicted stone-like in a cold, grey light, their features set deep in shadow. Mary stoically accepting the path her son must now tread; Jesus showing no emotion, except perhaps resignation, as if his hand, sharply delineated below the table, is being motivated by a greater power.

The dominant gesture in the painting, however, is that of the groom, dressed in bright red, who leans down below the tabletop to have his glass filled by a small, black servant: the person of least social status in the painting, if not a slave.

What does this all add up to? I read this painting as the depiction of Jesus’ political philosophy. Here we see the social order turned on its head.  ‘The last will be first, and the first last’. Here are the meek, inheriting the earth; the lowly being exalted. There is wonderful humility in the groom’s gesture that his bride doesn’t seem wholly to approve. Surely the servants should come to you and top up your glass without your stir? The meek, the humble, the poor take precedence.

One detail breaks this pattern: high in the centre of the painting, set against the night sky, is a carafe of the new wine catching the light as it is raised: a foretaste of wine being raised at the communion.

Meanwhile, in the bottom left corner, in opposition to the miracle, is a dog with a bone. He glares at us fiercely and directly with his green eyes. There is no way he is going to give up that bone, clenched in his sharp teeth. But he is not just a dog. He is human nature: jealous, self-interested and possessive. The opposite of everything that Jesus stands for. The individuals and companies with vested interests that they are not going to give up, the rich who refuse to share their wealth, the powerful who won’t concede defeat; the Donald Trumps who won’t accept an election result. What a dog!