The Four Elements: Water

In the Antwerp of 1569 the Church still forbade meat on Fridays, through Lent and on many other days of the year, and on those days the city ate fish. Beuckelaer gives the element of water to the fishmongers. Their stalls mix fresh water and salt, carp, pike, perch and tench beside cod, plaice, herring and a pale ray from the sea, with two pink steaks already cut and laid on a board. A man in yellow sleeves reaches into a basket of cod, and he and the older woman in the red hat look straight out, as if we had stopped to buy. Through the stone arch at the back the scene changes. On the shore of the Sea of Galilee the risen Christ tells the apostles where to cast their nets, and in the Gospel of John they haul in 153 fish.