Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

The Marriage Feast at Cana

Seville, about 1672

Oil on canvas

179 x 235 cm

Christ performs his first miracle, turning water into wine. Murillo has depicted the Biblical episode as if taking place in his own city of Seville. Servants fill Sevillian water pots, while a boy in a decorative orange-red tunic looks on eagerly. His lavish outfit suggests that he may have been enslaved. There were many enslaved Africans or Afro-Hispanics in Seville at the time, many of whom were forced to convert to Christianity through baptism. The painting was commissioned by Nicolas Omazur, a Flemish silk merchant resident in Seville, possibly to mark his marriage to Isabel Malcampo and demonstrate his religious piety.

Purchased 1947 (No.47.9)