The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet — from Matthew 22 and Luke 14 — tells of a king who invites guests to his son's wedding feast, is refused by those invited, and opens the banquet to all who pass in the street; a man found there without a wedding garment is cast out. Strozzi's 1636 version, in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, belongs to the tradition of sacred feast scenes that stretches from Veronese's enormous banquet canvases to Tintoretto's Last Suppers. The parable invited the painter to display a crowded scene of mixing social types — the replacement of the privileged with the poor and outcast — with all the visual richness of a feast: food, vessels, textiles, and animated human interaction. The Accademia context situates the work within the central collection of Venetian painting.

Canvas with the large-scale figure arrangement typical of Venetian feast painting. Strozzi manages multiple figure types across a broad compositional field, differentiating them by costume, age, and gesture. Still-life elements — platters, vessels, foodstuffs — are painted with the quality attention he gave to his dedicated genre works.