The world of Marc Chagall cannot be contained or limited by the labels we attach to it. It is a world of images and meanings which form their own splendidly mystical discourse. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin (The Bride and Groom under the Canopy) was begun as the artist entered his 90th year, a man who had known tragedy and strife, but who never forgot life’s moments of rapturous pleasure. Here, the dreamy delights of a Russian village wedding with its arrangements of well-worn attendees are brought to us with such happy wit and cheerful innocence that there is no resisting its charm. Using a golden toned emulsion combining oil and opaque, water-based gouache, the warmth, happiness, and optimism of Chagall’s usual positivism is wrapped in a luminous radiance suggesting the influence of gold-leaf religious icons or early Renaissance painting that sought to impart the impression of divine light or spiritual enlightenment. Using a combination of oil and gouache can be challenging. But here, in Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall employs it to give the scene an otherworldly quality, almost as if it has just materialized out of his mind’s eye. Its textural delicacy creates the impression that light is emanating from the work itself and gives a spectral quality to the figures floating the sky.