Le Repas chez Lévi

Veronese finished this enormous canvas in 1573 as a Last Supper for the friars of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, replacing one by Titian that had burned two years earlier. Then the Inquisition called him in. About three months after he finished it, the Holy Tribunal wanted to know why a sacred supper was crowded with drunken Germans, dwarfs, a servant with a nosebleed, jesters and dogs. Veronese's answer was almost a shrug, that painters take the same liberties as poets and fools, and that he had a lot of wall to fill. He didn't repaint a single figure. Instead he changed the title. He added an inscription pointing to Luke, chapter five, and turned the scene into the feast in the house of Levi the tax collector, a meal that could honestly include publicans and sinners. The banquet you see now is the one that got him out of trouble by renaming, not repainting.