The Wedding at Cana in his glass. bottom-left-quarter — the steward of the house (dressed in green) supervises the black servant-boy proffering a glass of the new, red wine to the bridegroom, the host of the wedding feast; at the edge of the nuptial table, a dwarf holds a bright-green parrot, and awaits instructions from the house steward. II. On the vertical axis — the contrasts of light and shadow symbolize the co-existence of mortality and vanitas, the transitory pleasures of earthly life; the protocol of religious symbolism supersedes the social protocol. In the wedding banquet proper, the holy guests and the mortal hosts
Cana holds that this is the first public miracle of Jesus. The other biblical references to Cana are also in John: , which mentions that Jesus is visiting Cana when he is asked to heal the son of a royal official at Capernaum; and , where it is mentioned that Nathanael (sometimes identified with the Bartholomew included in the synoptic gospels' lists of apostles) comes from Cana. The Book of Joshua mentions one city () and one brook (; ) named Cana – neither is likely to be the Cana of Galilee. In secular history, the annals of Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser