The miraculous draught of fishes, circa 1618-19

Around 1618, the fishmongers' guild of Mechelen went to the most sought-after painter in Flanders and asked for an altarpiece. This is what Rubens gave them, and every panel turns on a fish. The center shows the apostles straining to haul in nets so full the water foams and the boat tips. On one wing, Peter finds a coin in a fish's mouth to pay the temple tax. On the other, young Tobias carries the fish whose gall will cure his father's blindness. In these years many Flemish fishermen were leaving for the Protestant north, and a guild filling its altar with Catholic fish miracles was making a quiet point about which faith it kept. The triptych still stands over that altar, having survived the bombs that damaged the church in 1944.