The Marriage at Cana

In 1669 an Antwerp dealer sold this panel to Louis XIV as the work of Jan van Eyck, the most famous name in early Flemish painting. The court painter Charles Le Brun listed it under that name in the royal inventory of 1683, and it was still shown as a Van Eyck when the Louvre opened in 1793. Only in the late 1860s was it given to Gerard David. In 1902 the kneeling man at the lower left was recognised as Jean de Sedano, a Castilian merchant settled in Bruges, who also kneels, a little younger, on a triptych by David in the Louvre, and that match strengthened the case. His wife kneels opposite him in a white headdress, their small son behind him. Beyond the columns of the wedding hall at Cana rises a Flemish square, probably Bruges with its market hall.