A Painting Comes Home (or at Least a Facsimile) Yazzy's at WilliamVerdult.com

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

According to an article in the New York Times, by Elisabetta Provoledo, she asks, " Can — and should — technology right a historical wrong? That’s a question Italians have been asking since a facsimile of Veronese’s 16th-century “Wedding at Cana” was installed on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore a few weeks ago.

At the heart of the debate is the digital re-creation of this vast 1563 painting, which Napoleon’s forces removed from the refectory in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore 210 years ago and took back to France as war booty.

The facsimile, by the Madrid enterprise Factum Arte, is a stunningly accurate replica of the 732-square-foot canvas. Details are reproduced down to the most minute topography, including the raised seams rejoining the panels that Napoleon’s troops cut the painting into when they transported it to France in 1797. (The original hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.)

Writing in the newspaper Corriere della Serra, the critic Pierluigi Panza described the copy as the “third miracle at Cana” — the first being the water that Jesus turned into wine in the Bible story, the second being the original painting, considered a masterpiece of 16th-century art.

But for some, Factum Arte has created a Frankenstein monster.

While a copy may be a useful teaching tool, Cesare De Michelis, a professor of literature at the University of Padua, wrote in the newspaper Sole 24 Ore, it can be “devastating and ‘immoral’ if it claims to substitute the original, just like cloning human life.”

In a telephone interview, Factum Arte’s director, the artist Adam Lowe, said such comments arose from “a complete misunderstanding.”

“Our work is not a clone but a deep and detailed study,” he said.

To see the rest of the Times article go here.

It is the product of around 18 months of work, about the same amount of time that Veronese took to paint the original. Mr. Lowe says that he and Veronese probably depended on the same number of assistants (some two dozen on a rotating basis), although the tasks carried out were obviously completely different.

Using a palette of new technologies, Factum Arte specializes in documenting and producing facsimiles of artworks for conservation purposes and restoration. The facsimile of “The Wedding at Cana” was created in phases, including a monthlong stint at the Louvre in which a team of five worked by night to scan the original at a scale of 1:1 under even lighting with a camera mounted on a telescopic mast and a specially designed color scanning system.

“We treat the damaged surface with the same detail as a drawing,” Mr. Lowe said. “It’s a process of verification.”

Eventually, all the visual information — some 1,591 scanned files — was assembled and printed out on a high-resolution flatbed pigment printer. Mr. Lowe’s assistants repeatedly printed until the right hue and tone were achieved.

Finally, the image was transferred to a specially prepared canvas that had been primed with materials available in Veronese’s time. Real paint was used to touch up the joints of the 10 sections.

Getting the colors right was the hardest thing, Mr. Lowe said. The painting had been restored several times over the centuries, reflecting changing contemporary tastes and conceptions about Veronese’s intended hues.

“I think he’d be shocked to see it in the Louvre — though mollified, perhaps, by the fact that nine million visitors pass in front of it each year,” Mr. Lowe said.

“Still,” he added, “once he realized that 8.9 million were only interested in the ‘Mona Lisa,’ he might change his mind.” (The “Mona Lisa” hangs in the same gallery at the Louvre, across from “The Wedding at Cana.”)