Luigi Vanvitelli: Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

Artist: Luigi Vanvitelli

The guests are disposed around an hemicycle table, in the presence of alien and putti genes. The bridegroom is a well-grown hero with helmet and not the legendary Cupid. Among the present are the spouses at one end, a faun on the other side and the Three Graces inside the curve.
For the wedding of Peleus and Thetis there was an important precedent in Rome, a large picture by Romanelli at the Barberini house. The bold decision to draw a foreshortned table and to give it the shape of a canopy, abandoning symmetry and the lavish width, makes the scene compact, too dense to truly mimic ancient scenes.