The Wedding at Cana

Some guests at this wedding wear clothes that one scholar used to date the picture before the 1520s, which is why the museum places it around 1518. Others have put it nearer 1532. It matters because Garofalo painted the same subject in 1531, in a version now at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, so this could be an early study for that picture or a later, altered copy. Most writers see his hand throughout, while a few suspect help from his workshop. The story is the first miracle in John's Gospel, water turned into wine at a feast in Cana. Christ sits at the left beside the tall jugs, and the faces along the white table show surprise and disbelief. In 1603 this was probably the painting that Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, a pope's nephew, listed as the Lord's Supper, on a small panel, by a good old hand.