the iconology of rubens's "miraculous draft of fishes" triptych

The Iconology of Rubens's "Miraculous Draft of Fishes" TriptychAuthor(s): Cynthia LawrenceSource: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1984), pp. 24-35Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780530 .

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The iconology of Rubens's Miraculous draft offishes triptych*

Cynthia Lawrence

Although the iconography of Peter Paul Rubens's Mira- culous draft offishes triptych (fig. i) has long been recognized, the question of its iconology has not been investi- gated.1 This is hardly surprising, since the depictions of the fishermen-disciples and the biblical scenes of fishing contained in its center panel and wings seem appropriate and unremarkable in an altarpiece commissioned by the Mechelen Fishmongers' Guild.2 Yet when approached from the perspective of its patrons, in the light of contemporary circumstances which first ruined and then restored their livelihood, the triptych's symbolic meaning extends beyond the literal subjects of its panels. Furthermore, what appears initially to be a collection of independent episodes emerges as an ingenious agregate of related events, presented in a unified program.

The gospels contain two accounts of miraculous drafts of fishes, one occurring in Luke and the other in John. Although their common central event makes the

* Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Rutgers University in 1980, and at the College Art Association annual meeting, New York, 1982. I would like to thank all those who have commented and made suggestions, particularly Professor E. Haverkamp-Begemann: I would also like to thank the Rutgers University Research Council for its support.

I Panel, 301 x 447 cm, 1618-19. 2 Rubens's triptych replaced an earlier altarpiece discussed in A.

Monballieu, "De muurschildering van de Mechelse visverkopers in de kerk van Onze Lieve Vrouw over de Dijle te Mechelen," Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst te Mechelen 69 (I965), pp.68-76; neither the altarpiece nor the wall painting behind it appear to have been relevant to the subjects or composition of the later triptych. The 1618 commission is docu- mented in M. Rooses, L'oeuvre de P.P. Rubens, vol. 2, Antwerp i888, pp. 24-28.

3 The most recent discussion of this problem is in Julius Held, The oil sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, vol. I, Princeton i982, p. 462.

depictions of the two miraculous drafts appear to be identical, the specific details of each miracle, and those incidents that accompanied or followed them, identify them as the separate and distinct events that they were.3 The Mechelen triptych's center panel depicts the first miraculous draft,4 which occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry and is recorded in Luke 5: I-io.5 It shows the two boats described in Luke (verse 2), the figure of Christ in one of them (verse 3), the filled net (verse 6), the gesture for help to the fishermen in the second boat (verse 7), and the figure of Peter who recog- nizes Christ's divinity and falls at his knees (verse 8).

Raphael's cartoon The miraculous draft offishes (fig. 2) from his Acts of the apostles series was an important source for subsequent sixteenth-century Flemish depictions of Luke's account following its display in a Brus- sels tapestry workshop between 1517-21.6 One example, the center panel of an unattributed mid-century trip-

4 Panel, 30I x 235 cm; see Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Antwerp 1888, pp. 19-21.

5 The center panel is accepted as depicting Luke's miracle in E. Neeffs, "L'oeuvre de P.P. Rubens a Malines," Bulletin de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 42 (1876), p. I3; R. Oldenbourg, Rubens: des Meisters Gemalde (Klassiker der Kunst 4), Stuttgart & Berlin 1921, pp. 162 and 472; G. Delmarcel, "De Wonderbare Visvangst," Dekenale Kerk Onze Lieve Vrouw over de Dijle, Mechelen, Mechelen 1972, p. 31; H. Vlieghe, De schilder Rubens, Utrecht & Antwerp I977, p. o04; and J. van Herck, "Mechelen Onze Lieve Vrouw over de Dijle: de wonderbare visvangst," Vlaanderen 26 (1977), pp. 25-26. Other authors have described the panel in a manner consistent with the narrative in Luke without stating that it is the source; they include Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Antwerp i888, pp. 19-20, and E. Michel, Rubens, sa vie, son oeuvre et son temps, Paris 1900, pp. 236-37.

6 J. Shearman, Raphael's cartoons in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, and the tapestriesfor the Sistine Chapel, London & New York 1972, pp. I38-40.



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i Peter Paul Rubens, The miraculous draft offishes, x168-I9. Mechelen, Onze Lieve Vrouw over de Dijle

2 Raphael, The miraculous draft offishes, cartoon. London, Victoria and Albert Museum (lent by H.M. the Queen)

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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE

.. '

3 Anonymous Flemish, The calling of the apostles. Brussels, Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique

4 Jan van der Elburcht, The miraculous draft offishes. Antwerp, Cathedral

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Rubens's Miraculous draft offishes

5 Joachim Beuckelaer, Market scene with the miraculous draft offishes, 570. Naples, Pinacoteca Nazionale

tych in Brussels (fig. 3),7 includes the miraculous draft and Peter's resultant acknowledgment of Christ; both this episode and the calling of the apostles, to its right, are labeled with their respective biblical sources. If Rubens was familiar with Raphael's conception of the miracle in Luke through similar works, he also knew Raphael's cartoon, as well as the others in the series, first-hand, and recorded it in drawings, and perhaps in a lost painting.8 While the exact relationship of Raphael's Miraculous draft offishes to the Mechelen panel is com-

7 Ca. 1540, panel, Brussels, Museum voor Oude Kunst. The center panel, 17 x 175 cm, depicts the scenes described in Luke 5:3-II, and Matthew 4: I 8-22. The wings, each 117 x 8 cm, include Peter swimming towards Christ on the shore and the shared meal, from John 21 :1-14 (left), and Peter and the fish with the shekel, recorded in Matthew 17:25-26 (right). On the reverse of the wings are niches with grisaille figures of Andrew (left) and John the Evangelist (right). The triptych, attributed to Jan van der Elburcht, is discussed in L. van Puyvelde, "Het altaarstuk van het Ambacht van de Visverkopers te Antwerpen," Bulletin Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique 12 (1963), pp. 39-47.

plex, it nevertheless was its source.9 Although Raphael's cartoon, and the works based on

it, to some degree offer an explanation for Rubens's choice of Luke's miracle, his decision not to depict the second miraculous draft of fishes, which occurred after the Resurrection and is recorded in John 2I: i-8, in a commission from a Flemish fishmongers' guild marks a potentially significant departure from Netherlandish tradition. John's miracle, accompanied by Christ's command to his disciples to feed his sheep (verses 15-17),

8 Rubens probably copied the cartoons during his stay in Genoa in 1604. He may also have made painted copies, now lost, at the same time: see Shearman, op. cit. (note 6), p. 147. Vlieghe, op. cit. (note 5), p. o04, states that he knew the tapestries themselves. It is also significant that Rubens was perhaps familiar with later copies of the series which were woven in Brussels tapestry workshops during the first third of the seventeenth century. Of particular importance are those produced by Jan Raes, whose shop executed Rubens's own tapestry cycle on the history of Decius Mus in i616-I8, at roughly the same time as he was working on the Mechelen triptych; see H.C. Marillier, The tapestries at Hampton Court, London I962, p. 29.

9 Stated most recently in Vlieghe, op. cit. (note 5), p. 104.

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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE

6 Gaspar de Crayer, The miraculous draft offishes, I644. Brussels, Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique

was evidently preferred by Flemish fishermen as well as fishmongers, for whom these events had obvious occu- pational relevance.

Jan van der Elburcht's Miraculous draft offishes (fig. 4),10 commissioned by the Antwerp Fishmongers' Guild for its altar in the cathedral in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, presents in a compressed narrative the sequence of events described in John 21. In the background, Elburcht depicted both the miraculous draft (verse 6), and Peter swimming towards Christ on the shore (verse 7); in the middle ground, the dragging of the net filled with fish (verse 8); and in the foreground, Christ's shared meal with his disciples (verses

io Panel, 190 x 167 cm. The earliest description of the panel, in Carel van Mander's Het schilderboek, Haarlem I604, fol. 205a, specifically mentions the figures of Peter fishing and Christ seated in the foreground, the tree behind Christ, and a storm at sea. However, van Mander describes neither the wings nor the predella panels. J.B. Descamps, Voyage pittoresque de la Flandre et du Brabant, Paris I 769, p. 40, noted the depiction of Peter fishing, and named the three predella panels. The center panel is briefly discussed in P. Wescher, "Jan van Elburcht, ein vergessener Maler des i6. Jahrhunderts," Oud Holland 52 (1935), pp. 127-29. The altarpiece, attributed to Adam van Noort, is included in van Puyvelde, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 35-39. More recently the panel, together with its rediscovered wings, has been discussed by

9-13), and his commission to feed the sheep (verses 15- I7). John's miracle is also the one represented in the slightly later secularized works of the Antwerp artists Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer. The latter's Market scene with the miraculous draft offishes (fig. 5) of I 570,11 includes a minute visionary scene of Peter swimming towards Christ in the background (top right), and the consequence of the miraculous draft in the foreground fish market, with the commission to feed the sheep implied by the fishmongers' hawking of the catch. Gaspar de Crayer's choice of the later miracle in his I644 canvas (fig. 6) for the hall of the Brussels Guild of Fish- mongers,12 in which Christ points to the catch with one

J. Bruyn, "Niet Lange Pier maar Cleen Hansken," Bulletin Boymans- van Beuningen 7 (1966), pp. 2-12.

1i Panel, 156 x 213 cm; see Keith P.F. Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer and the rise of secular painting in the context of the Reformation, New York 1976, pp. 93-94. Although its subject and the inclusion of contemporary fishmongers would suggest that the panel was intended for a fishmongers' guild, this cannot be confirmed.

12 Canvas, 229 X 330 cm; see H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer, sa vie et ses oeuvres, vol. i, Brussels 1972, pp. 149-50. The prominence of Peter in the composition, and his particular response to Christ's rather ambiguous actions, may allude to the commission to feed the sheep.

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hand and to the bread and fish of the shared meal with the other, is a particularly revealing example of the continued preference in seventeenth-century guild commissions for John's miracle. That de Crayer, a close fol- lower of Rubens, reverted to the later miraculous draft, in spite of the depiction of the earlier one in the ac- claimed Mechelen panel, suggests the strength of its continued popularity.

The representation of Luke's miraculous draft in a commission from a Flemish fishmongers' guild may therefore be a significant clue to the meaning ofRubens's triptych. Both miracles, in which the fishermen cast out their nets in spite of their perception that there were no fish to be caught, illustrate the rewards of obedience and faith. As will be discussed below, this concept, which had personal relevance for the Mechelen Fishmongers' Guild at the time it commissioned its altarpiece, is also alluded to in the triptych's other panels. However, depictions of John's miracle invariably included some reference to the command to feed the sheep, an append- age that appropriately referred to their patrons' commercial activities, but which at the same time drew at- tention away from the miracle and what it signified, as it does in figs. 4-6. In contrast, not only was Luke's miraculous draft, as in Rubens's center panel of the Mechelen altarpiece, unencumbered by distracting and temporally removed events, but it also included Peter's dramatic acknowledgment of Christ as the Lord, a response which underscored it. In addition to Raphael's prototype, the clearer and more emphatic references to faith and obedience in the earlier miraculous draft perhaps account for its selection.

Although it has not been previously noted, the Mechelen triptych's center panel and flanking wings are

13 Panel, 30I x Io6 cm; see Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Ant- werp i888, pp. 21-22. The subject is taken from Matthew 17: 27. The panel may also refer to the revenues raised by the guild to pay for its altar by taxing fish imported from the northern Netherlands: see Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Antwerp I888, p. 26.

14 Panel, 301 x io6 cm; see Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Ant- werp 1888, p. 2 . The panel is derived from Tobit 6 :3-4; Sarah's cure and its consequences are described in 6:16-17, and 8:1-14.

15 Vlieghe, op. cit. (note 5), p. 104. It should be noted that the wings show a reversal of the traditional placement of Old Testament subjects on the left, and New Testament on the right. This arrange- ment reflects not the biblical sources for the subjects, but the chro- nological order of the commands to which they allude. The commission to become fishers of men, which preceded that of casting out

related both literally and figuratively, and they were intended to be understood not individually, but as a unit. The left wing, Peter catching the fish with the shekel (fig. 7),13 depicts the episode when Peter, at Christ's command, catches a fish containing in its mouth the coin that will be used to pay the collectors' tax. In the right wing, Tobias and the fish (fig. 8),14 Tobias, instructed by the angel Raphael, pulls out of the water a fish that will remove the mysterious curse on Sarah. While the wings have been identified as New and Old Testament episodes depicting fishermen or the act of fishing,15 it has not been sufficiently emphasized that they, like the center panel, both depict miracles, or, more specifically, miraculous catches.

Furthermore, there is a similar emphasis in the biblical sources of the wings, as in that of the center panel, on obedience rewarded. Like the fishermen-disciples, who were instructed to let out their nets at an unpropitious time, both Peter and Tobias were told to catch a fish when doing so seemed enigmatically unrelated to their respective circumstances. Despite their reluctance they did as they were told, and in each case their efforts were successful. The presence of a common reference in the three apparently unrelated panels of the Mechelen triptych recalls the similar program of Rubens's Descent from the cross triptych of 1614 (fig. 9). Here the Descent of the center panel, together with the Visitation in the left wing, and the Presentation in the temple in the right wing, all depict people who at different times bore the body of Christ, a visual play on the Greek translation of Christopher, the name of the patron saint of the Ant- werp Guild of Harquebusiers.16 While the apparent ab- sence of a unified program in the Mechelen triptych explains why this association has not previously been

demons, therefore appears on the left. The sources for these commissions are given in notes 19 and 20 below.

I6 N. Verhaegen, "The iconography of the Descent from the cross," in The Antwerp altarpieces, ed. J.R. Martin, New York i969, p. I23. The subject of the Descent from the cross appears at least eight times in Rubens's oeuvre between the Antwerp Descent and the Mechelen Miraculous draft offishes, see J. Bialostocki, "The Descent from the cross in works by Peter Paul Rubens and his studio," Art Bulletin 46 (1964), pp. 511-24. One of these, a drawing of I6I6-I7, has on the reverse a preparatory drawing for St Andrew in our fig. I ; see F. Stampfle, Rubens and Rembrandt in their century: Flemish and Dutch drawings of the seventeenth century from the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 1979, pp. 47-48, and ill. nrs. 14 and I4v.

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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE

7-8 Details of fig. I, Peter and the fish with the shekel (left wing), and Tobias and the fish (right wing)

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9 Peter Paul Rubens, The descent from the cross, 1612-14. Antwerp, Cathedral

made, its revealed presence, and its similarity to that of the Antwerp Descent from the cross, offers an insight into the evolution of Rubens's innovations in the triptych format during the second decade of the century.

Flemish works depicting John's miracle, such as figs. 4-6, contain not only the miraculous draft of fishes, but also the commission to feed the sheep, either overtly stated or indirectly implied. Likewise, when the Meche- len triptych's wings are read together with its center panel, we can see that they also allude, on another symbolic level, to two remarks which Christ made after the first miraculous draft to the fishermen who became his

17 Reverse of left wing, 301 x 106 cm; Rooses, op. cit. (note 2), vol. 2, Antwerp I888, p. 23.

i8 Reverse of right wing, 301 x io6 cm; Rooses, ibid., p. 22. 19 Described in Matthew 4:19, Mark I: 17, and Luke 5: o. 20 Stated with minor variations in Matthew 0: i, Mark 3:15, and

Luke 9 :1.

first disciples, and who included the patrons of the Mechelen Guild, Peter (fig. io),17 and Andrew (fig. I I).18 He said that he would make them fishers of men,19 and that he would enable them to cast out demons.20

Rubens's emphasis in the left wing (fig. 7) is not on the fish that Peter has caught, but on the crowd of spectators who are gazing at the shekel he has taken from its mouth.21 The panel is a literal depiction of Peter "fishing for men," luring and landing the crowd with the bait of the miracle. Rubens himself used the expression "fishers of men" in just this sense in a letter dated immediately prior to the completion of the Mechelen trip-

21 This emphasis is more pronounced in Lucas Vorsterman's en- graving of 1618, where the expanded composition includes an even larger crowd of gaping spectators; see exhib. cat. Rubens e l'incisione, Rome (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) 1977, p. 71, nr. 127.

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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE

!i~:i~:4:;~. ,~ .....- ...... ......

Io-I I Reverse sides of figs. 7 and 8, Saint Peter and Saint Andrew

... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ p~.i ''9P::: ::?i: '" ;-:;::;?? ??: r??? ??;? ?-???--,..,..,. .,

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32

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12-13 Peter Paul Rubens, Jonah cast overboard and Christ saving Peter from drowning. Nancy, Musee des Beaux Arts

tych.22 In congratulating Sir Dudley Carleton on the successful sale of a group of paintings, he stated that one of them, a particularly popular Fishing of the apostles, had "really succeeded in becoming for us 'fishers of men."' In the right wing (fig. 8), the fish itself is more prominent than that in the left, suggesting the role it is soon to play in driving out Sarah's demon. Rubens's references to the commissions given to Christ's first followers additionally suggest the importance of Raphael's Acts of the apostles series for the Mechelen altarpiece. The Sistine Chapel tapestries, and their cartoons, illustrate the same commissions, to proselytize and to cure the sick, as carried out by Peter and Paul. These commands are also represented in fig. 3. Here the scene of the calling of the apostles on the right, opposing the miraculous draft of fishes on the left, is labeled with its source, Matthew 4-a chapter which includes the commission to become fishers of men, and which goes on to

22 The letters of P.P. Rubens, ed. and trans. by Ruth S. Magurn, Cambridge, Mass. 1955, p. 38. See also Held, op. cit. (note 3), vol. i, Princeton 1982, p. 464.

23 Panel, 77 x 77 cm. The panel is based on Jonah i: I3-16: see Le siecle de Rubens dans les collections publiquesfranfaises, exhib. cat. Paris (Grand Palais) 1977-78, p. 172.

describe Christ's preaching and healing. The Mechelen triptych originally had a predella con-

sisting of three panels: Jonah cast overboard (fig. 12) on the left,23 Christ saving Peter from drowning (fig. 13) on the right,24 and between them a Crucifixion, which is now lost.25 The predella panels also suggest the same levels of meaning discernible in the center panel and wings. As men who emerged alive from the sea, Jonah and Peter represent Old and New Testament examples of miraculous catches. At the same time, the scenes in which they are depicted suggest, crosswise, the commissions alluded to in the wings above them. Peter's rescue by Christ is analogous to the "fishing for men" in the left wing, and Jonah's being thrown overboard by his com- rades, who believe that he is the cause of the storm, is analogous to the "casting out of demons." Furthermore, Jonah's imminent death on the left is countered by Peter's rescue on the right, a reference to the concept of

24 Panel, 77 x 77 cm. Titled Christ walking on the water in Le siecle de Rubens, cit. (note 23), p. 173, the panel depicts Matthew 14:24-34.

25 All three predella panels were removed from the church in I794; see Le Siecle de Rubens, cit. (note 23), p. I73, and V.G. Martiny, "Etude historique et archeologique de l'eglise Notre Dame de la Dyle a Malines," Bulletin de la Commission Royale des Monuments et des Sites 13 (1962), p. 47 and fig. 92.

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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE

faith leading to salvation which is actually a significant factor in both episodes, and which is symbolized in the Crucifixion which separated them physically, but linked them iconographically.26

In spite of their different subjects, all the panels in the open triptych share the same meaning: that of obedience or faith rewarded. The altarpiece's emphasis on this concept reflects the new and personal significance it had for the Mechelen Fishmongers' Guild. The recent history of the fishing industry in Flanders, and, in particular, a series of events immediately preceding the altarpiece's commission, indicate that, like their patrons Peter and Andrew, members of the Mechelen guild had also obediently persevered when there were no fish to be caught, and that they too had been rewarded for their faith by a "miraculous draft of fishes."

From the late middle ages to the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the Netherlands had a vast and flour- ishing fishing industry, which involved both the catching and selling of fish.27 While coastal towns from Dun- kirk to Scheveningen were the sites of the fishing fleets, inland cities like Antwerp, Brussels and Mechelen were also involved as centers of the fish trade. Merchants there received fresh as well as salted or dried fish which were consumed locally or exported to cities even further inland, like Cologne, Mainz and Strasbourg.28 The den- sity of the population and the prevalence of industry and commerce in Flanders and Brabant made fish an important source of food, and the merchants who regulated the fishing trade prospered accordingly. The Mechelen Fishmongers' Guild was no exception. By the sixteenth century it controlled the city's major wharf, it had built a splendid guildhall,29 and had established an altar in the nearby church of Onze Lieve Vrouw over de Dijle.

However, with the siege of Brill and Vlissingen by the Sea Beggars in 1572 and the subsequent disruption of the coastal areas, the fishing industry in the southern Netherlands began to decline.30 The few fish that were caught were taken north and did not reach their traditional southern markets. This was intensified in 1577 by

26 The panels of Jonah, on the left, and Peter, on the right, clearly reflect a traditional damned/saved configuration.

27 H.A.H. Boelmans Kranenberg, "Visserij in de Zuidelijke Ne- derlanden, I580-I650," in Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 7, Nieuwe tijd, Bussum I980, p. 170.

28 Ibid.

the proclamation of a law in the northern Netherlands which imposed a penalty for selling domestically caught fish elsewhere.31 The final blow to the southern Nether- lands' fishing industry came with the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and the subsequent closing of the river Scheldt, which meant that an important part of Flanders' own catch could no longer reach its inland markets. Although some coastal fishing with stationary nets continued, in- creasing disruptions had caused the majority of Flemish fishermen to emigrate north by 600o.32 With the exception of one brief period of dramatic recovery, the industry was to remain depressed until I648.

The period in which the Flemish fishing industry was temporarily revived was during the Twelve Years' Truce (I609-2I) when, under the terms of the treaty, fish caught in the north could be shipped south without penalty.33 Exports from the north were considerable during this period, which worked to the advantage of the southern centers like Antwerp and Mechelen and to their guilds of fishmongers. It was during this period of economic recovery that the Mechelen guild commissioned its triptych. The prosperity of the period accounts not only for the guild's financial ability to commission an altarpiece from the country's foremost artist, but also for that altarpiece's references to miraculous catches and to divine concern for the needs of unwaver- ing followers.

The lifting of the ban on the export of fish from the north in I609 produced a sudden and dramatic abun- dance of fish which was analogous to the biblical miraculous draft of fishes that had filled the nets of the guild's patrons, Peter and Andrew. After nearly forty years of stagnation and decline, the Mechelen fishmongers found that their supplies and markets, their prosperity and their status had been miraculously restored. The comparison of the renewed export of fish from the north with the biblical miracles would have been apparent to Rubens, for the lifting of the ban benefited Antwerp as well as Mechelen. The closing of the Scheldt had had disastrous consequences for shipping and fishing in

29 H. Coninckx, "In den grooten zalm," Bulletin du Cercle Ar- cheologique, Litteraire et Artistique de Malines 27 (1922), pp. 1-19.

30 Boelmans Kranenberg, loc. cit. (note 27). 31 Boelmans Kranenberg, op. cit. (note 27), p. 171. 32 Ibid. 33 Boelmans Kranenberg, op. cit. (note 27), p. 172.

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Antwerp: like many Flemings, Rubens saw its reopen- ing as essential to the commercial rebirth of his city, and he was periodically involved in unsuccessful negoti- ations to that end throughout his long diplomatic ca- reer.34

Given the concurrence of economic recovery with that of a religious revival in Flanders during the Twelve Years' Truce, it is not unlikely that both painter and patrons recognized that the contemporary "miraculous draft," like that in Luke, and indeed like all the scenes in the open Mechelen triptych, emphatically demonstrated divine acknowledgment of their fidelity, and proof of Christ's concern for the needs of his obedient followers. By choosing to depict the miraculous draft in Luke, with Peter's subsequent revelation and submission, rather than that in John with its attendant and distractingly vocational commission, Rubens underscored the rewarded faith and abiding devotion of the Mechelen fishmongers who had continued to ply their trade in the

34 This sentiment is poignantly stated in a letter from Rubens to Pierre Dupuy on 28 May 1627, see The letters, cit. (note 22), pp. I68- 69. Rubens's earlier concern regarding the closing of the Scheldt is noted on pp. 84, 222, and 363. The effect on Antwerp of the closing of the river is also discussed in J.R. Martin, The decorationsfor the Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi, London & New York 1972, pp. 19-21, and 178- 79.

35 The fishermen on the center panel wear the same fur caps and high leather boots that were part of the working uniform of their seventeenth-century counterparts.

Catholic south, and who had not, as so many Flemish fishermen, emigrated to the Protestant north.

The similarity of the Mechelen fishmongers' recent experience to that of the fishermen-disciples depicted in their triptych conceivably engendered in them strong feelings of identification with Christ's first followers, most significantly with their patrons, Peter and Andrew. Rubens formally reinforced this experiential identification by placing the familiar and vaguely secularized fishermen in the foreground of the center panel.35 Here their physical proximity to the guild members who stood before their altar emphasized and strengthened the anal- ogy between them and their seventeenth-century counterparts.36

DEPT. OF ART HISTORY RUTGERS UNIVERSITY NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.

36 The identification of the Mechelen guild members with the fishermen-disciples in the center panel is suggested in several earlier sources. Michel, op. cit. (note 5), p. 237, states that the fishmongers would have recognized themselves in the fishermen. A similar idea in E. Fromentin, Old masters of Holland and Belgium, Boston 1882, p. 44, who observed that the panel was painted for fishermen and entirely executed from fishermen. Louis Hourticq, Rubens, New York 1918, p. 89, noted that the fishermen must have been delighted to "see themselves drawn to life, the same and yet glorified."

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the iconology of rubens's "miraculous draft of fishes" triptych

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