''The Miraculous Draught of Fishes'' is a circa 1618–1620

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

by the

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

artist

Jacob Jordaens Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens (19 May 1593 – 18 October 1678) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Fle ...

depicting a New Testament episode. It is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of

Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...

, France. Its inventory number is 618. The painting was long assumed to be by

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

, who had treated similar subjects involving the fisherman Simon Peter.

Wilhelm von Bode Wilhelm von Bode (10 December 1845 – 1 March 1929) was a German art historian and museum curator. Born Arnold Wilhelm Bode in Calvörde, he was ennobled in 1913. He was the creator and first curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, now calle ...

bought it as a Rubens (in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, in 1911), and the Rubens specialist Justus Müller-Hofstede confirmed that attribution in 1969. Only in 1977 did a consensus emerge among art historians that the painting is a work from the end of the early period of the long-lived Jacob Jordaens's career. This was established on

compositional In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. ...

as well as chromatic grounds. The purpose of the painting has never been satisfactorily established. It is too large for an

oil sketch An oil sketch or oil study is an artwork made primarily in oil paint in preparation for a larger, finished work. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, especially so as to gain approval for the design of a larger commissi ...

, and too rough for an official commission. It may be a modello for a lost, larger and more polished painting, or for a

tapestry Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

. It could also have been destined for a predella.

References

External links

''La Pêche miraculeuse''
, presentation on the museum's website {{DEFAULTSORT:Miraculous Draught of Fishes Paintings in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg Paintings by Jacob Jordaens 1610s paintings Paintings depicting Saint Peter Baroque paintings Fish in art