Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)
FRANKLIN, DAVID: Giorgio Vasari's Marriage Feast at Cana in Budapest
recorded in the Gospel. The other haloed figure appearing on Christ's left is presumably Saint Peter - the first of the apostles. The agitated reactions of the some of the disciples and witnesses imply that they are already aware of the metamorphosis that has taken place before them. Vasari's small painting in Budapest is related to a large canvas in the non-reformed Benedictine church of San Pietro in Perugia (fig. 56), which itself belongs to a cycle of three paintings. 2 Because of their relative obscurity and inaccessible location, these three appear never to have been measured but they are monumental in scale. Though now in the Chapel of the Sacrament in the church, their original placement of the monks' refectory accounts for the choice of subjects which all three relate miracles involving food: the Saint Benedict predicting the arrival of two hundred measures of flour, the Marriage Feast at Cana, and the Prophet Elisha feeding the prophets in Gil gal after a famine (from 2 Kings 4,38^41). The painting featuring Saint Benedict is alone signed by Vasari and dated 1566. The cycle includes some relatively obscure narratives involving dining each extracted from different sources - the Old and New Testaments, as well as Benedictine hagiography, as opposed to the heroic ones more frequently seen like the Last Supper, Saint Benedict fed in a cave, or the prophet Elijah fed by the angel, but all ones that involve the miraculous transformation of materials. The very obscurity of the choices is revealing about the sensibility of some mid-sixteenth century artists and their patrons in Italy. Vasari himself described the Perugia cycle of paintings twice, once in his autobiography included last in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists of 1568 and in his personal record book. The published account reads: "I took the road by Perugia in order to place three large altar-pieces executed for a refectory of the Black Friars of S. Piero in the city. In one, that in the centre, is the Marriage of Cana in Galilee, at which Christ performed the Miracle of converting water into wine. In the second, on the right hand, is Elisha the Prophet sweetening with meal the bitter pot, the food of which, spoilt by colocynths, his prophets were not able to eat. And in the third is S. Benedict, to whom a lay-brother announces at a time of very great dearth, and at the very moment when his monks were lacking food, that some camels laden with meal have arrived at his door, and he sees that the Angels of God are miraculously bringing to him a vast quantity of meal". 3 This description contains much significant information. In addition to establishing a secure provenance for the works, it relates that the Cana painting was the centrepiece in a tripartite arrangement in the dining hall. It naturally has the most strictly centralized composition with the figure of Christ appearing directly in the middle of the entire scheme. The passage also mentions that Vasari visited Perugia to oversee personally the installation of his paintings. The visit in question was a celebrated one in April and May 1566 on which he was, coincidentally, by 2 The Perugia paintings have never been the subject of an in-depth study. According to Galassi, F. V., Descrizione delle pitture di San Pietro di Perugia, chiesa de' monad neri di S. Benedetto, 3rd ed., Perugia 1792, pp. LI-LIII, the paintings had been moved from the main facade of the refectory in 1763. 3 Vasari. G., The Lives ofthe Painters, Sculptors and Architects!, trans, de Vere,G. duC.,ed. Ekserdjian, D., New York and Toronto 1996, p. 1061. For the Italian see Vasari, G., Le vite de più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori 7, Florence 1568, ed. Milanesi, G., Florence 1878-85, p. 707.
