Getty Museum

A Banquet

Date

about 1623

Medium

Gray and brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white gouache, lightly squared in black chalk,, on two sheets of paper

Culture

Italian

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

This densely populated drawing offers a fascinating array of figures and attitudes. A monumental woman, her right arm outstretched, dominates the center of the composition. Behind her, noblemen and women enjoy a sumptuous feast around a long, rectangular table. At either end of the table, dutiful servants attend to the meal and at the left edge of the drawing, a cluster of servants prepare food and drinks. A servant in the left foreground provides musical entertainment for the banquet. Morazzone created this large compositional study for an ambitious painting, likely commissioned by Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Despite its distinctive cast of characters, the drawing's subject has not been firmly identified. Some scholars suggest that the subject is the marriage feast at Cana, where Christ turned water into wine, or Esther before Ahasuerus. But there are no figures that are easily identifiable as either Christ or King Ahasuerus. More recently, it has been proposed that the drawing represents a scene from Greek mythology, the marriage of Thetis and Peleus.

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