Secular figures were not allowed in religious paintings. A Last Supper could only depict Jesus and the twelve apostles.
Yet Paolo Veronese added German soldiers and a parrot to Feast in the House of Levi. He likewise included many secular figures in The Wedding at Cana. This violated the customary rules of religious painting, not to mention that the buildings in the painting were contemporary Venetian architecture, populated by noble merchants and musicians. First-century architecture did not look like that.
But the grand wedding banquet Veronese painted was joyful, and his works were representative of the Venetian School. The Academy Gallery contained quite a few paintings in a similar style.
By this time, painters had already left the "cave" and begun depicting a vibrant, colorful world.
Raphael's paintings reminded Pomona of Where's Wally?—that boy in the red-and-white striped shirt who was always hidden somewhere in a dazzlingly crowded picture.
Raphael painted himself into School of Athens, showing only his head. Anyone with poor eyesight would never find him. Starting with him, painters began hiding portraits of themselves within their paintings; Veronese hid himself in The Wedding at Cana as well.
Most brides would not weep and sob at their own weddings. Weddings called for a joyful atmosphere and brilliant colors, and Veronese's paintings set the tone for Baroque art in the seventeenth century.
Dancing was forbidden in churches, but the Venetians danced anyway, eventually causing the Pope and the Doge of Venice to fall out.
Italy had a proverb: necessity was the beginning of creation.
In Europe, where asceticism prevailed, pleasure-seeking was regarded as moral corruption. At such times, all sorts of human behaviors were "created" to satisfy "needs"—caviar during fasting periods, for instance, and all manner of sculptures and portraits cloaked in mythology.
In modern times, everyone knew smoking