Christ at the Sea of Galilee

Circle of Jacopo Tintoretto (Probably Lambert Sustris)

National Gallery of Art

A man stands at a coastline with his back to us, gesturing toward a group of seven men sailing on the rolling sea in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale, peach skin. The man standing near us to our left wears a light blue tunic under a shell-pink garment that drapes around his hips and falls to his ankles. A thin gold halo encircles his head over curly brown, shoulder-length hair. Green land extends along the foreground close to us, and trees rise to either side. It is unclear whether the man stands on the land or on the water with bare feet. His body is angled away from us and to our right as he looks and gestures with one arm raised toward the boat on the water beyond. Choppy waves and swirling, dense clouds ranging from topaz to navy blue dominate the landscape. Each of the seven men in the sailboat does something different. For instance, one leans over the edge to grasp a fishing net while another pulls a rope for the sail. Two of the men have white halos. One stands at the back of the boat looking into the far distance and the other begins to step onto the surface of the water.