From The Vine To The Table and Beyond

Hidden amidst the glitter, grace is in the details. The hand that proffers the glass of wine, mimicked by the bowl of grapes on the table, is a small vignette from The Wedding Feast of Cana (1563) by Paolo Veronese, a Venetian painter. A 16th century Cecil B. De Mille, Veronese easily deployed a cast of thousands in his monumental artworks.

Now on view at the Louvre in Paris, the painting has been subjected to unspeakable indignities in its past. Napoleon smuggled it into France by cutting in in half, the better to hide it, and during the Franco-Prussian War it was rolled up in a tube, like a map.
In the northern hemisphere, this is the time of year when the grapes are harvested. The grape vines are beautiful in themselves; the hard work of harvesting is made beautiful by painters. Although they look decades apart at least in time and style, Edouard Debat Ponsan's Coin des Vignes (1886) was painted only two year before Vincent van Gogh's Picking the Red Grapes at Arles.

Soon to come, the Art Nouveau style inspired fanciful decorative works that put the humble grapes and vines to uses only Bacchus could have dreamed. The bowl by Albert-Louis Dammouse is from the collection of the Musee D'Orsay. It doesn't even need grapes.