In this panel from the Maesta Altarpiece of Siena now separate and in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the power of "call" is made present. The following description of this back and forth action between Christ, Peter and Andrew comes from one of the spirituality author and BBC religious affairs producer Michael Ford's books, Song of the Nightingale: a Modern Spiritual Canticle.

"In his painting The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew...the great Italian artist Duccio de Buoninsegna shows the brothers like twins, "a single apostolate with two dimensions." This insight is helpful in understanding "the companionship" that exists between my respective dual vocations which have been lived out on the edge of the church, just as Christ calls Peter and Andrew from the shoreline. Yet for all their togetherness and compatibility, there is also aloneness and an uncomfortable sense of difference....a uniqueness that has been divinely bestowed." [pg. 4]