The Wedding at Cana (c. 1686): Artwork and History

The Wedding at Cana (c. 1686) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Giuseppe Maria Crespi (Italian, 1665–1747).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Giuseppe Maria Crespi filled this depiction of the wedding feast where Jesus performed his first miracle with luxurious accessories and smaller interactions between characters within the larger narrative. On the left, Jesus converses with his mother; on the right, the wedding’s astonished host and his servant taste the water Jesus has miraculously turned into wine. The painting brings together the Venetian tradition of color and grandeur with the close observation of figures characteristic of the artist’s native Bologna.

Object facts

• Title: The Wedding at Cana
• Date: c. 1686
• Artist attribution: Giuseppe Maria Crespi (Italian, 1665–1747)
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 188 × 248.4 cm (74 × 97 3/4 in.); Framed: 215.9 × 273.7 cm (85 × 107 3/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1956.129

Collection credit

Wirt D. Walker Fund

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.