(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)