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Details of object number: Gm239
Title:Feast in the house of Simon the Pharisee
Object name:tableau
Created by:Kessler, Stephan (Maler/in) (Donauwörth, 1622 - 1700) Wikidata GND Ulan Benezit
Production date:1660
Description:In the centre is depicted the main event of the episode narrated in the Gospel of Luke (7, 36-50): Jesus and his disciples are guests in the house of Simon the Pharisee. During the meal, a well-known woman of the town, a sinner who was later always equated with Mary Magdalene, appears: she kneels before Jesus and weeps, washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. Jesus tells the horrified Pharisee that, by her behaviour, the sinner has shown him so much love that her many sins are now forgiven.
The biblical scene is depicted here as a sumptuous Baroque banquet, using compositional and figurative motifs taken from models by other artists, some of them older, but probably also referring to the actual eating habits of the provosts and canons of the Neustift/Novacella Abbey.
The biblical scene is depicted here as a sumptuous Baroque banquet, using compositional and figurative motifs taken from models by other artists, some of them older, but probably also referring to the actual eating habits of the provosts and canons of the Neustift/Novacella Abbey.
Hist. crit. notes:Commissioned by Markus Hauser (1588-1666), Provost of Neustift, this 2.4 x 10-metre picture is the largest painting on canvas in Tyrol. It follows the tradition of monumental banquet paintings (“cene”) painted by the Venetian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese for the refectories of various monasteries in Venice and the Venetian Terraferma (hinterland). The closest reference is to the work depicting the same subject painted by Veronese ca. 1570-72 for the refectory of the Servite monastery in Venice: following the abolition of the monastery in the course of the secularisation that occurred in the early 19th century, the picture ended up in the Palace of Versailles in France. The artist Stephan Kessler has also borrowed a number of other individual figures and groups of figures from several reproductions of engravings based upon paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.
Technique:painted (oil)
Dimensions:
- height: 2.4 m
width: 10 m
Institution:Augustinian Abbey of Neustift