In contrast with this picture, and as a gorgeous specimen of the Venetian style of treatment, we may turn to the “Marriage at Cana” in the Louvre, originally painted to cover one side of the refectory of the convent of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, whence it was carried off by the French in 1796.  This immense picture is about thirty-six feet in length, and about twenty feet in height, and contains more than a hundred figures above life-size.  In the centre Christ is seated, and beside him the Virgin Mother.  Both heads are merely commonplace, and probably portraits, like those of the other personages at the extremity of the table.  On the left are seated the bride and bridegroom.  In the foreground a company of musicians are performing a concert; behind the table is a balustrade, where are seen numerous servants occupied in cutting up the viands and serving dishes, with attendants and spectators.  The chief action to be represented, the astonishing miracle performed by him at whose command “the fountain blushed into wine,” is here quite a secondary matter; and the value of the picture lies in its magnitude and variety as a composition, and the portraits of the historical characters and remarkable personages introduced,—­Francis I., his queen Eleanora of Austria, Charles V. and others.  In the group of musicians in front we recognize Titian and Tintoretto, old Bassano, and Paolo himself.

The Marriage at Cana, as a refectory subject, had been unknown till this time:  it became popular, and Paolo afterwards repeated it several times.  The most beautiful of all, to my feeling, is that in the Dresden Gallery, where the “ruler of the feast,” holding up the glass of wine with admiration, seems to exclaim, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.”  In another, which is at Milan, the Virgin turns round to the attendant, and desires him to obey her Son;—­“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it!”

As the Marriage at Cana belongs, as a subject, rather to the history of Christ, than to that of the Virgin his mother, I shall not enter into it further here, but proceed.

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After the marriage at Cana in Galilee, which may be regarded as the commencement of the miraculous mission of our Lord, we do not hear anything of his mother, the Virgin, till the time approached when he was to close his ministry by his death.  She is not once referred to by name in the Gospels until the scene of the Crucifixion.  We are indeed given to understand, that in the journeys of our Saviour, and particularly when he went up from Nazareth to Jerusalem, the women followed and ministered to him (Matt. xxvii. 55, Luke, viii. 2):  and those who have written the life of the Virgin for the edification of the people, and those who have translated it into the various forms of art, have taken it for granted that SHE, his mother, could not have been absent or indifferent where others attended with affection and zeal:  but I do not remember any scene in which she is an actor, or even a conspicuous figure.