A Face in the Crowd
Encountering Christ at the Louvre
By John Michael Heard
Paolo Veronese, The Wedding at Cana, Oil on canvas, 267 × 391 inches, 1563.
Last summer I had a surprising encounter with a painting during a visit to the Louvre in Paris. Those who have visited the museum know how huge it is. After an hour of looking at statues, my friend and I realized the Louvre would soon be closing, and we had not even entered the wing of the building that holds the museum’s pièce de resistance—the Mona Lisa.
We quickly made our way toward that hallowed room, skimming over priceless pieces along the way. When we entered, the crowd was exactly as I expected: people pressed in around the Mona Lisa like a throng of paparazzi, holding cameras over their heads to capture their moment in her presence. Looking around, I was surprised to discover that the other walls were lined with paintings too. I hadn’t expected anything to be in her vicinity, for what could compete with that enigmatic gaze?
Moving deeper into the room, I noticed a few museumgoers were turned to face the opposite wall. I also turned around and saw a painting I had never heard of or seen before—The Wedding at Cana by the 16th century Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese.
The painting, for those who are not familiar with it, is enormous. It is the largest in the Louvre, in fact. It covers the entire back wall facing the Mona Lisa. The painting depicts the story of Jesus performing his first miracle of changing water into wine in John 2. Jesus is seated next to Mary, his mother, and they are surrounded by a jubilant wedding celebration as it would have been in 16th century Venice. Servants pour wine in the foreground of the painting, and all manner of illustrious looking individuals surround the figure of Christ. Christ is the only person looking out among the festive crowd. His expression, like the Mona Lisa’s, is serene, inscrutable.
Encountering the artwork for the first time, my eyes searched the massive canvas. When I found the figure of Christ, hidden in the center of the scene, I stopped. Everything around me stopped. It was like catching the eye of a friend in a crowded room. Except, in that moment, Christ himself was seated before me—looking out at me through the canvas.
As I stood there, chills ran down my spine and I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit. What was true of the room I stood in was also true of his: no one was paying any attention to him. All around me, people were passing through, pushing toward the Mona Lisa or perusing the other paintings. Similarly, the crowd feasting with Jesus appeared ignorant of his presence. They were playing music, dancing, eating, talking. But somehow, when I looked up at him, I was astonished to see that his eyes were on me. I could hear him ask, Michael, do you see me? Are you paying attention?
The significance of the moment began to unravel for me. There I was, standing in the Louvre, in the very room that holds perhaps the most famous painting in the history of humankind. As the world flocked to see that little portrait of some obscure noblewoman, Christ himself was beckoning from the opposite wall. His invitation for those who would stop to notice him was the same for each of us—that we should come to the table and eat with him.
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One of the great barriers that the church faces concerning the renewal of the arts in our day is our failure to recognize God’s beauty. Artists can only illustrate what we have first experienced ourselves. We will never be able to show the splendor of our God if we have not managed to become intimately acquainted with his beauty.
“My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’” the psalmist writes. “Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Psalm 27:8). The psalmist’s cry should be our own. God is beautiful. Every beautiful thing is only beautiful because it reflects something of his nature. Why should we settle for contemplating the beauty of his gifts when we could behold the gift giver himself? As Hebrews 4:16 reminds us, we should make every effort to approach the throne of grace with the confidence of sons and daughters, having our hearts sprinkled by the blood of the lamb, so that we might look upon him whose magnificence has inspired every beautiful thing.
But how do we seek his face? Scripture teaches us that Jesus is the Word made flesh, “the image of the invisible God…” (Col. 1:15). If we wish to contemplate the beauty of God, we should look to person of Christ. Even though he ascended to the Father, Jesus promised to be with us always (Matt. 28). Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, and by the Spirit’s power, we can live in the constant awareness of Christ’s presence and participate in his work in awakening the world to the knowledge of his beauty.
When we seek him in our daily lives, God is pleased to reveal himself in surprising ways. Like Moses at the burning bush, we discover him in moments and places that we least expect to find him. That is what I experienced at the Louvre. While to everyone else Jesus was just another face in the crowd that day, through Paolo Veronese’s painting I caught a glimpse of heaven. My heart was drawn to worship. As I consider my role as an artist, my prayer is that God will similarly use my work as a window into heaven, that when people read my stories, somehow, they might recognize Christ looking at them and inviting them to join the feast.
John Michael Heard is the Content Editor for Creo Arts. He is based in Wilmore, Kentucky, pursuing an M.A. from Asbury Theological Seminary. In addition to his work for Creo, he publishes regularly on Substack at Not Yet Home. He is passionate about storytelling, with a focus on screenwriting and middle grade fiction.
Image Source: Paolo Veronese, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
