The Wedding at Cana ‘will return’ to its original setting in the Palladian Refectory on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and unveiled to the public during the opening ceremony for the exhibition The Miracle of Cana: the originality of re-production, thanks to the creation of a ‘second original’, a facsimile on a one-to-one scale, created thanks to the most sophisticated reproduction techniques.The reproduction will have all the elements of the original: the lines, nuances of colour, and even the flaws in the supporting canvas and signs of the wear and tear of time. Moreover, thanks to meticulous documentary and historical reconstruction work and a virtual restoration, it will also be possible to see what some 20th-century reworking of the painting covered up.

The remarkable operation meant to bring us closer to the authentic aura of the refectory, irremediably lost on 11 September 1797, when the French commissars of the Napoleonic army decided to include The Wedding of Cana among the works to be sent to Paris as war booty.

The project is organised in collaboration with the Louvre Museum of Paris, thanks to the support of Enel, Consorzio Venezia Nuova, Fondazione Banco di Sicilia, San Pellegrino and the Venice Casinò.
The copy will be made with technology developed by Adam Lowe, a British artist and founder of Factum Arte, a workshop at the cutting-edge of reconstructing and reproducing works of art.

by Roberta Nalesso
redazione VeneziaSì