The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

In 1740, more than 20 years after Jouvenet's death, François-Bernard Lépicié, secretary of the Royal Academy of Painting, told how this picture was prepared. Jouvenet, he wrote, trusted nothing but nature, so before painting it he went to Dieppe, the fishing port on the Channel coast, and made a great many studies there, watching closely the colours of sea, sky and shore together. Whatever the truth of the story, the realism of the catch struck people from the start. Silvery fish spill across the foreground, and on the right two men, bare-armed and in head cloths, lean back with their whole weight on the ropes.

The subject is from the Gospel of John. After a night of catching nothing, the disciples cast their net where Christ tells them to, and it fills so full they can barely drag it in. He stands at the centre with both arms raised.

The canvas was one of four for the nave of Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Paris. They were so big that at the Salon of 1704 they had to be shown outdoors, in the courtyard of the Louvre. Jouvenet seems to have given them their last touches only in 1706, once they were hung in the church, which would explain the date beside his signature.