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
Marriage at Cana may also be interpreted as the antitype of Moses' first public miracle of . This would establish a symbolic link between Moses as the first savior of the Jews through their escape from Egypt and Jesus as the spiritual savior of all people. Some commentators have speculated about the identity of the unnamed bridegroom. One tradition, represented by Thomas Aquinas among others, holds that the bridegroom was St John the Evangelist himself. Bishop John Spong suggests in his book "Born of a Woman" that the event was actually the wedding of Jesus himself to Mary Magdalene. In 1854, at a