Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast

In 1614 the Dutch Republic lived off the sea, and everyone in it knew what the sea could do. Ships were wooden and fragile, and sailors' stories filled the deep with monsters. Adam Willaerts packs both kinds of danger into one oval panel. On the left a ship has been thrown against the rocks under a tall cliff, and two more heel over in the swell. In front, a lifeboat crammed with survivors pushes through green waves under a small sail, and just beyond it a huge spotted fish breaks the surface. The museum calls the scene every seaman's worst nightmare, the real threat and the imagined one in a single picture. Willaerts signed and dated his work on the side of that crowded lifeboat.