Miraculous Fishing 1619

Peter Paul Rubens made this small oil on panel painting titled "Miraculous Fishing". With expressive brushwork, Rubens has captured the moment when Christ helps his disciples with their laborious task. Note the figures straining as they haul in the heavy nets. These were working men, dependent on a daily catch for their livelihoods. Consider the material reality of their lives: the coarse, damp netting, the rough wooden boats, the constant exposure to sun and salt. Rubens himself, of course, never knew this kind of work. He was an artist at the apex of a highly developed system of production, with apprentices grinding pigments and stretching canvases. Even in this small painting, we can see how his mastery of the medium – oil paint – allowed him to depict a scene of such physical exertion. So, think about the way that materials and making can both reveal, and conceal, social realities. Fishing was hard, and so was painting in its own way.