Executed in the Mannerist style (1520–1600) of the late Renaissance, the large-format (32'7 x22'3) oil painting comprehends the stylistic ideal of compositional harmony, as practised by the artists Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

[6] In the 18th century, in Seven Discourses on Art, the portraitist Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said that: The subjects of the Venetian painters are mostly such as gave them an opportunity of introducing a great number of figures, such as feasts, marriages, and processions, public martyrdoms, or miracles.

[7] As a narrative painting in the Mannerist style, The Wedding Feast at Cana combines stylistic and pictorial elements from the Venetian school's philosophy of colorito (priority of colour) of Titian (1488–1576) to the compositional disegno (drawing) of the High Renaissance (1490–1527) used in the works of Leonardo (1452–1519), Raphael (1483–1520), and Michelangelo (1475–1564).

[8] As such, Veronese's depiction of the crowded banquet-scene that is The Wedding Feast at Cana is meant to be viewed upwards, from below – because the painting's bottom-edge was 2.50 metres from the refectory floor, behind and above the head-table seat of the abbot of the monastery.

In the 16th century, Palladio's great-scale design was Classically austere; the monastery dining-room featured a vestibule with a large door, and then stairs that led to a narrow ante-chamber, where the entry door to the refectory was flanked by two marble lavabos, for diners to cleanse themselves;[9] the interior of the refectory featured barrel vaults and groin vaults, rectangular windows, and a cornice.

[9] In practice, Veronese's artistic prowess with perspective and architecture (actual and virtual) persuaded the viewer to see The Wedding Feast at Cana as a spatial extension of the refectory.

[8] Among the wedding guests are historical personages, such as the monarchs Eleanor of Austria, Francis I of France, and Mary I of England, Suleiman the Magnificent, tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; the poetess Vittoria Colonna, the diplomat Marcantonio Barbaro, and the architect Daniele Barbaro; the noblewoman Giulia Gonzaga and Cardinal Pole, the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, the master jester Triboulet and the Ottoman statesman Sokollu Mehmet Paşa – all dressed in the sumptuous Occidental and Oriental fashions alla Turca popular in the Renaissance.

[8] According to 17th-century legend and artistic tradition, the painter of the picture (Paolo Veronese) included himself in the banquet scene, as the musician in a white tunic, who is playing a viola da braccio.

[3][12] A more recent study links the identity of the performer seated behind Veronese playing viola da gamba with Diego Ortiz, musical theorist and then chapell master at the court of Naples.

[14] The Wedding Feast at Cana is a painting of the Early Modern period (1453–1789); the religious and theological narrative of Veronese's interpretation of the water-into-wine miracle is in two parts.

To readily transport the oversized painting – from a Venetian church to a Parisian museum – the French soldiers horizontally cut and rolled up the canvas of The Wedding Feast at Cana, to later be re-assembled and re-stitched in France.

Appointed by Pope Pius VII, the Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova negotiated the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) for the French repatriation of Italian works of art that Napoleon had plundered from the Papal States.