Religious themes are woven into the fabric of everyday life in this scene of a fishing village in Flanders. On the far right of the composition, above the bounty of netted fish, Christ is aboard a ship preaching to Peter the Apostle. Christ implores him to abandon his life as a fisherman, become a disciple and ‘fish for men’ instead. Jan Brueghel the Younger weaves a story from the New Testament into what would have then been a contemporary setting.

From a well-known family of artists, the reputation of Brueghel the Younger was grounded in his aptitude for landscape and still-life painting. He trained with his father, Jan the Elder, before travelling to Italy in 1624 with his childhood friend, Anthony van Dyck. When his father died in a cholera epidemic, Jan the Younger took over his busy Antwerp studio. The back of this work is stamped with the insignia of the Guild of Saint Luke, a group of artisans that Jan the Younger was heavily involved with, eventually becoming the master painter of its Antwerp branch.