Christ Shown to the People

In June 1562 the Benedictine monks of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice signed a contract with Paolo Veronese for a vast Wedding at Cana, a feast of more than a hundred figures set among columns and balustrades. That same year, in Verona, Paolo Farinati signed and dated this canvas. As a young man he had worked close to Veronese, the museum notes, and it calls this a Mannerist composition crowded with architecture and with figures in movement.

The story is from the Gospel of John. Pilate has had Jesus flogged, crowned with thorns and dressed in a purple robe, and he leads him out before the people with the words Behold the man, saying he finds no guilt in him. The crowd answers by shouting for crucifixion. Farinati, like other painters of his day, took a serious interest in architecture, and the museum points out that it shows in the way this scene is built, almost two metres wide.