The Wedding Feast of Cana

Christ's first miracle, at a wedding in Cana, was to turn water into wine when the feast ran short (John 2:1-11). Duccio lines a long table with guests, Christ and his mother at the left, while in the foreground servants stoop over the great stone jars to draw out the new wine. From the predella - the base - of the Siena Maesta, the scene brims with domestic incident, much like Giotto's treatment of the same subject; but Duccio's touch is finer and more decorative, the Sienese counterpart to Giotto's blunt Florentine realism.