Christ on the Sea of Galilee

Which lake episode

The Sea of Galilee carries several distinct moments and a title naming only the lake does not choose between them: the stilling of the storm, the walking on the water, the miraculous draught of fishes, and the appearance to the disciples at Tiberias after the Resurrection. Three of those belong to the ministry and one belongs after it, which means the same title can sit in two different parts of the cycle depending on the reading.

Where it falls

Mid-ministry, if the episode is a storm or a walking on the water; after the Resurrection, if it is the lakeside appearance. The record does not resolve this, and no resolution is invented here. The lake subjects belong together as a group of nature miracles rather than healings.

The record

The catalogue gives Tintoretto, 1580, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, at 117 by 169 centimetres — a horizontal, which is the format the subject nearly always takes. The style is entered as Mannerism and late Renaissance and the artist as Italian. The subject fields file the work under landscape, sea, seascape, boats and ships, and nautical alongside religion. The measured palette reads as yellow. Eighteen works in this catalogue are attributed to Tintoretto, more than to any other painter here.