Church of Our Lady across the river Dijle

In 1619 a boat arrived in Mechelen carrying a new altarpiece from Antwerp. It had been ordered by the fishmongers' guild, one of the richest in the city, for its altar in the Church of Our Lady across the Dijle, a Brabant Gothic church on the far side of the river from the old centre. The painter was Peter Paul Rubens.

The guild chose subjects close to its trade. The central panel shows the miraculous draught of fishes from the Gospel of Luke, the apostles straining to haul in a net so full that their boats begin to sink. The inner wings tell two more fish stories, young Tobias with the angel and the fish whose gall will cure his father's blindness, and Peter finding a coin in the mouth of a fish. When the wings are closed they show the fishermen-apostles Peter and Andrew.

The triptych has had a restless life. French revolutionary troops took it to the Louvre in 1794, and when it came back some two decades later its old place had been filled, so it went to a chapel behind the high altar. It survived the 1944 bombing that destroyed the gable of the right transept, and a restoration begun in 2021 treated both the paint and the wooden panels. Of the small predella panels that once ran beneath it, two are now in Nancy, in France, and a third is lost.