Christ at the Sea of Galilee

Alessandro Magnasco

National Gallery of Art

Two pale-skinned men face each other across surging waves in a cove surrounded by trees in this horizontal painting. Tall trees to each side have dark, gnarled trunks and small, olive-green leaves. They curve toward each other like parentheses. Swirling sage-green and muted turquoise water kicks up waves highlighted with ivory white. The water heaves in great waves back into the distance where it meets a blue form, which could be a mountain or more water. The men are small in scale within the domineering landscape. One man stands on the shore near the lower left corner. His topaz-blue cloak lifts high in the wind behind him. He is barefoot, has long brown hair, and he holds out one hand toward the second man, who is waist-deep in the water. That second man’s honey-yellow and blue robes whirl around him as he lunges forward, arms spread wide. The narrow band of land spanning the bottom edge of the canvas is strewn with jugs and bits of stone and lumber. A pale ship with a man leaning over our side is barely visible on the right at the mouth of the cove. Above the scene, a robin’s egg-blue sky peeks out from wide streaks of flax-yellow and peanut-brown clouds.