Paolo Veronese painted The Wedding Feast at Cana, the largest painting in the Louvre.
Veronese created the monumental canvas in 1562–1563 for the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. It depicts the biblical wedding banquet at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine, but the crowded Renaissance scene also includes richly dressed figures, musicians, servants, architecture, and details resembling contemporary Venetian life.
The painting measures approximately 6.77 by 9.94 metres, giving it an area of about 67.29 square metres. Its scale was designed for the monastery dining hall, where the canvas visually extended the refectory’s architecture and towered above the diners.
A common mix-up is treating it as a work by Titian or Tintoretto, two other major Venetian painters. Veronese was born Paolo Caliari and became known for brilliant color, theatrical compositions, and grand architectural settings. French troops seized the painting from Venice in 1797 during Napoleon’s Italian campaigns; it remains in the Louvre, while a full-scale digital facsimile is displayed at San Giorgio Maggiore.