Call of the Sons of Zebedee

When Marco Basaiti signed this panel in 1510, it stood over the high altar of a Carthusian monastery on an island out in the Venetian lagoon, the church of Sant'Andrea della Certosa. That building is gone now, but the picture was made for the monks who lived there. Their prior, Andrea Suriano, wanted a scene that would push them to renew their own calling every morning. So Basaiti painted the moment Christ calls the fishermen James and John, the sons of Zebedee, as they step from their boat by the shore of Galilee. Their father kneels at the right and points his sons toward Jesus, agreeing to let them go. Around the small figures opens one of Basaiti's wide, clear landscapes, the kind of distance that would soon define Venetian painting.