Main content
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 7
Lesson 3: 16th century- A miraculous appearance for a queen: Juan de Flandes, Christ Appearing to His Mother
- A wedding and a miracle for the queen of Spain: Juan de Flandes, Marriage at Cana
- The Cantino Planisphere
- Bringing the figure to life, Berruguete at The Met
- Bringing the figure to life, Berruguete at The Met
- Alonso Berruguete, Abraham and Isaac
- Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina, Head of Christ
- The Tower of Belém
- Belém Monstrance
- Alejo Fernández, Virgin of the Navigators
- Sacred geometry in a Renaissance ceiling from Spain
- El Escorial, Spain
- El Greco, Burial of the Count Orgaz
- El Greco, View of Toledo
- El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
A wedding and a miracle for the queen of Spain: Juan de Flandes, Marriage at Cana
Juan de Flandes, Marriage at Cana, c. 1500–04, oil on wood panel, 21 x 15.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). A conversation between Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris.
Part of the Expanded Renaissance Initiative. Created by Beth Harris, Smarthistory, and Steven Zucker.
Video transcript
(upbeat piano music) - [Dr. Lauren] We're in
the Metropolitan Museum, standing in front of a
painting by the artist, Juan de Flandes, that's
showing the marriage at Cana. - [Dr. Beth] Juan de Flandes is an artist who is from Flanders, hence
his name, but he's working in Spain for Queen Isabel. - [Dr. Lauren] We don't
know much about him prior to his time in Spain, but we know that he was brought to Spain by Isabel to serve in her court,
and he will eventually become her court painter. - [Dr. Beth] This is a very small painting that invites us to come
up very close to it and look really careful at
it, and what we're looking at is a story from the life of Christ. We're actually looking at
one of Christ's miracles. - [Dr. Lauren] Jesus is at this wedding with the Virgin Mary,
and wine has run out, and the Virgin Mary turns to Jesus and asks him if he would be able to make the wine flow again. - [Dr. Beth] And so, what
the artist presents us with, it seems like the moment
of the miracle itself. We see Mary and Jesus on the left, the bride and groom facing us on the back, sitting in front of a cloth,
and on the right side, a figure pouring the water, and so, you have a sense of the passage of time because the water is flowing, and a sense that any second, that
water will turn into wine, and we will actually witness
the miracle taking place. - [Dr. Lauren] And we get
some sense that the miracle is just about to happen
in Christ's gesture, where he has his hand raised, where he's blessing the water. I really do get the sense that the miracle is about to happen at any moment. - [Dr. Beth] And it's
lovely how Mary's attention is directed at Christ, and
helps draw our attention to him, and then, we look
from him toward the water, which is about to be turned into the wine. - [Dr. Lauren] And I
love how Juan de Flandes has used a couple of other
techniques to draw our eye around this scene. The red robes of the groom
are mirrored in the red robes of the attendant who's pouring the water. The blue of both Jesus and Mary's mantles are reflected in the figure who's behind the attendant pouring water,
who is also wearing blue, so we're led in these diagonals
across the composition. - [Dr. Beth] And at the
same time, our eye is drawn directly back to the bride
and groom, who are facing us at the end of the table
because of that cloth that hangs behind them where
we can still see the creases, and also, the convex
mirror, which we often see in Flemish art of the Renaissance. - [Dr. Lauren] And we see a
lot of the characteristics of Flemish painting here, and, of course, Juan de Flandes is from Flanders. You have that convex mirror,
we have this attention to fine details, we have the
use of oil painting here, where we have these rich,
saturated colors, and glazing. - [Dr. Beth] In terms of
details, the most fascinating is the view in the convex
mirror, where it seems that we see part of the room, the part that we are
standing in, it seems, as the viewers, where
the columns that continue the columns on the left side of the room, and beyond that, a landscape
similar to the landscape we see on the left. In a way, the convex mirror
helps complete the space of the painting. - [Dr. Lauren] And I love how smooth the whole surface looks. We see very few brush
strokes in this painting. We see just a few in the
jugs at the bottom right of the composition, and
maybe a few in the water that's running from one jug
to the next, but otherwise, it's a very smooth painting,
and there's not a lot of extraneous objects
throughout the composition. It really is Juan de Flandes painting with a sense of clarity. - [Dr. Beth] And, to me,
drawing attention to geometry, is the geometry of those
vessels in the front, their rotundity, but
their simplified geometry, or the squared columns
that we see on the left, the squares on the wall behind. We do have a geometrically
ordered space here, and not a lot of decorative surfaces that would distract from that. The under drawing that the artist made for this painting before
he applied the oil paint has been examined by art historians, and what we've noticed is
that there were more elements in the composition originally,
when he conceived it, than we see today. - [Dr. Lauren] And what it suggests to us is that the patron,
Queen Isabel of Castile, had some say in how the
final painting should look. Juan de Flandes seems to adapt his style while he's working for Isabel. There's another painting
by Juan de Flandes here in the Metropolitan Museum
that copies a famous painting by Rodger van der Weyden very closely. Here, we have a painting
that departs from that, that does have this clarity of vision, this sense of harmonious geometry. There's also another painting
in The Met's collection where he departs from
both of these models. He clearly is adapting his style to suit the needs of his patron. - [Dr. Beth] I don't know about you, but I wanna look at this
painting for a long time. It's so beautiful, and so delicate. The shadows cast on the table
are especially fabulous. We have all the naturalism that we expect of the Renaissance, a
clear illusion of space that makes sense,
figures that have volume, figures who move naturalistically, and at the same time, all
of these lovely details that it takes time for our eye
to draw out of the painting. - [Dr. Lauren] It really
does invite close looking. Something that I find
remarkable about this painting is here, we're looking at a small painting that's just beautiful,
but this was actually part of a larger series of paintings commissioned by Queen Isabel of Castile. This is one of 47 paintings
that were to depict the life of the Virgin Mary,
and the life of Christ. - [Dr. Beth] That's a lot of paintings, and we know from an archival source that these were located,
at least temporarily, in a cabinet, but it's hard to know what they were ultimately intended for. - [Dr. Lauren] After
Isabel of Castile's death, the paintings get sent
to Margaret of Austria, and from there, the set
continues to get split apart, and recombined, and what
that means is that today, these paintings are actually
found in different museums across the world. (upbeat piano music)