Calling Peter: From Fish to Men

The Calling of Peter and Andrew
From Sermons by Maurice de Sully
Italian (Milan or Genoa), c. 1320-1330
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 187, fol. 19r

"While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening

to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
"Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets."
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
"Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men."
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.”

Luke 5:1-11

Gospel for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

February 10, 2019

Early in his mission Jesus called to himself a group of people who became his followers, his disciples and, ultimately, for eleven of the twelve men named in the Gospels, his Apostles.  The stories of the men he called are found in the various Gospel accounts.  All of them held modest positions in their own time.  None of them were among the elite of the era.  Four of them in particular were working at their craft, that of being fishermen on the lake of Galilee, Genneseret, as related by the Gospel of today.  These four men, and especially the three named Simon, James and John, would become the nucleus of the group of disciples.  One of them would have his name changed from Simon to Peter because of his rock like personality.  The lives of all would be changed forever by that single night’s fishing expedition and they would go on to spread the word about the Word and change billions of lives over twenty centuries.  Each year the Church reminds us of the event, of its consequences and that we too are called to follow in the footsteps of these fishermen, farmers and tax collectors.

Early Images

The subject of the calling of the apostles has been a constant one in the history of western art, but it has not been highly popular, at least not the calling of the first disciples, like Peter, Andrew, James and John.  The dramatic conversion of Matthew, the tax farmer, has always been more famous.  Nevertheless, there is a nice trail of iconography, even if a narrow one.

Christ Calling of Peter and Andrew
Reproduction of a Sixth Century Original
Byzantine, c. 1924
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

For the first 1,500 years of Christianity (although not much “art” was produced in the first two hundred or so) the story was told very simply.  Initially, Jesus stands on the shore directing the men to put down their nets.  

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
English, c. 1160-1180
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection

The words engraved on the banderol above the hand of Jesus are "Venite post me" ("Come, follow me"), a paraphrase of his invitation to the two brothers.  The word "post" is abbreviated in typical medieval fashion.  The abbreviation is indicated by the apostrophe that follows the letter p. 

Duccio, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, c. 1308-1311
Washington, National Gallery of Art

Lorenzo Veneziano, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, c. 1370
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin

Giovanni di Benedetto and Workshop, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
From A Missal
Italian, c. 1385-1390
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Latin 757, fol. 367r

This isn’t exactly how the story is told in Luke, but is probably a bit of a fudge between the story of the calling of the Apostles and the scene in Galilee after the Resurrection, where the risen Jesus summons them to breakfast and a miraculously large catch.  However, we can be fairly certain which story is really meant by several clues:  the presence of another (or even several other boats) and the absence of a fire, since one of the points of the post-Resurrection account is that Jesus is seen to cook and eat fish, proving He is no ghost, but a real Person.

Master of the Soane Josephus and Others, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
From Bible Historiale of Edward IV by Guyart des Moulins
Flemish, c. 1479
London, British Library
MS Royal 15 D I, fol. 368r

By the fifteenth-century the story begins to be told accurately, with Jesus located in a boat, instead of on the shore.  Several episodes from the same story might be depicted in the same frame, so we might see Jesus sitting in more than one boat.  In such works the artist was trying to honor the several different points at which Jesus can have been active in the story. And, as had been true from the beginning, the images were to a certain extent highly symbolic.  That is, the image is like a tableau.  There is little or no attempt to depict motion.  Each image stands for, or symbolizes, the Biblical chapter on which it is based, but the storytelling is not dynamic.

Christ Calling Peter and Andrew
From a Gospel Lectionary
Italian (Padua), 1436
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 180, fol. 105r

The Influence of Raphael

In 1515, the very important artistic genius, Raphael, was commissioned to design a set of tapestries for use in the lower lever of the Sistine Chapel.  The hangings were to be used only on extremely special occasions, which is why they survive today in beautiful condition.  They were woven in Flanders, then part of the territory controlled by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.  

Raphael, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Full Size Tapestry Cartoon
Italian, 1515
London, Victoria and Albert Museum

Since Raphael could not abandon his many projects then underway in Rome (such as the painted decoration of many parts of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican) he prepared full sized “cartoons” to direct the weavers.  This kind of cartoon is a full-scale, highly detailed, painted version of the artist’s intentions.  For many years they had been used to assist artists in transferring their ideas onto the wet plaster which is the surface on which frescoes are painted.  They were similarly used to transfer outlines of works to canvas or panel for moveable paintings.  And they were used for tapestry.  The tapestry cartoons were placed behind the upright looms on which the weavers worked, so that they could see what they were supposed to be creating.  That is why, incidentally, directions are reversed on the tapestry, since weavers also face the back of the piece they are making.  Therefore, the front of the tapestry, which actually faces the cartoon surface reproduces it backwards, so that left is right. 

Raphael, Completed Tapestry of the Calling of Peter and Andres
Flemish, c. 1519
Vatican, Musei Vaticana, Pinacoteca

By a kind of miracle, the weavers kept the cartoons once the tapestries were finished in 1519.  They produced additional sets for wealthy collectors in the Low Countries and elsewhere in Northern Europe.  The cartoons eventually ended up (again somewhat miraculously) in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  It is extraordinary that for this major work by a major artist of the High Renaissance we have both the original and the contemporary tapestry copy, complete.  One can see the original cartoons in London and some (occasionally all) the tapestry copies in Rome. 

However, Raphael’s masterful version of the scene had a huge impact.  It is dynamic, without being showy.  Peter is moved to acknowledge his sinfulness to Christ, with his brother not far behind, while around him the other men go about their attempts to contain the fish. Not surprisingly, it set the standard for many years afterwards.  In the later part of the sixteenth century artists frequently copied it virtually verbatim in their own work on the subject.  The quotation was sometimes disguised by setting it into the background of a genre scene.

Jacopo Bassano, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, 1545
Washington, National Gallery of Art

Battista Franco, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, c. 1550
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques

However, one of Raphael’s admirers and early biographer, Giorgio Vasari, returned to the idea of the encounter being on the shore.  He did this not once, but twice. 

Giorgio Vasari, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
Italian, 1551
Arezzo, Badia di Santi Flora e Lucilla

Vasari also returned to the earlier method of telling other parts of the story in the background.  In the background of his painting in the Vatican Andrew points Jesus out to Peter, a story narrated in the Gospel of John (John 1:35-41).

Giorgio Vasari, The Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew
Italian, No Date (Lived 1511-1574)
Vatican City, Apostolic Palace, Former Room of the Swiss Guard

From this point on, throughout the centuries, the narrative of the meeting between Jesus and the man who would one day be the foundation for the living Church that He would establish could be seen by artists as taking place either on land or in the boats, but they were never the simply static, symbolic images of an already known story.  That is, until the 20th century, with its techniques of deconstruction and minimalism.

Attributed to Marteen de Vos, Scenes from the Life of Christ and the Apostles
Flemish, 16th Century
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

Il Cigoli, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
Italian, 1607
Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti

Juan de las Roelas, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
Spanish, c. 1610
Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes

Peter Paul Rubens, The Calling of Peter
Flemish, c. 1618-1619

London, National Gallery

Luca Giordano, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, c. 1670-1700
Pittsburgh, Frick Art and Historical Center

Michel Corneille II, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
French, 1673
Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Jean Jouvenet, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
French, c. 1700
Paris, Musée du Louvre

Charles Joseph Natoire, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
French, c. 1750
Pau, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
French, 1853
London, Wallace Collection

James Tissot, The Calling of Peter
French, c. 1886-1896
New York, Brooklyn Museum

They now depicted landscapes that could be seen as real places and the deep emotions of surprise, penitence and commitment that are included in the Gospel account.

However, no artists appear to have pursued the astonishing example of Caravaggio's recently recovered painting of the subject.  

Caravaggio, The Calling of Peter and Andrew
Italian, c. 1602-1604
Hampton Court Palace, Royal Collection Trust

This quiet painting of psychological encounter is equal to the artist's better known painting of the Calling of Saint Matthew.  The picture, which had been classed for years as a copy of a lost work, was re-examined and reassessed during a recent cleaning.  Its provenance is impressive, as it was one of the painting acquired by King Charles I of England in the formation of his fabulous (now largely dispersed) collection only decades after the artist's death in 1610.  Upon the king's execution in 1649 it was included in the sale of the contents of his several palaces, but was reacquired by Charles' son, Charles II, at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.  It has been part of the Royal Collection ever since.  

However, with the dawn of the era of modern art, such expressions of emotional content have been abandoned.  The resulting images of the calling of these two apostles has, in a sense, come full circle back to the more symbolic representations of a much earlier era.

Two twentieth-century stained glass windows from Switzerland make this evident.

Eugene Dunand, The Calling of Saint Peter
Swiss, 1927
Geneva, Eglise Saints-Pierre-et-Paul, Meinier

Paul Monnier, "Follow Me and I Will Make You Fishers of Men"
Swiss, 1964
Geneva, Church of Saint Bernard de Menthon, Plan-les-Ouates

© M. Duffy, 2019 with additional material 2022 and 2024

Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.