Paolo Veronese

In 1573 Paolo Veronese finished a vast canvas, more than 12 metres wide, for the refectory of the Dominican friary of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, replacing a Last Supper by Titian that had burned in a fire two years earlier. Alongside Christ and the apostles, Veronese had crowded in dwarfs, a man with a nosebleed, dogs, a jester with a parrot, and German soldiers in armor, all painted with the same lavish colour as the sacred figures.

The Venetian Inquisition summoned him that July to explain himself. Asked directly why he had put buffoons and drunkards into a picture of Christ's last meal, Veronese answered that painters, like poets, ought to be allowed some licence, and that he had simply filled empty space in the composition as he saw fit. The tribunal ordered him to alter the painting within three months, at his own expense, to remove the offending figures.

Veronese never repainted a single figure. Instead he changed the title from The Last Supper to The Feast in the House of Levi, a different Gospel banquet where the text itself mentions sinners and tax collectors among the guests, and handed the tribunal a picture that satisfied the letter of their ruling without altering a single dwarf or dog.