Angels Catching Fish

Angels Catching Fish Commentary by Jane Heath Cite Share Show Bible Passage To a modern eye trained by familiarity with later Christian art, this detail from a fourth-century mosaic seems to show angels catching fish in a net. To an affluent ancient Roman viewer, it would probably recall seascapes that they had seen in luxury villas, where winged cupids were frequently portrayed catching fish (Holden 2002: 31). A very similar motif is found in a non-Christian context in the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily dating to a similar time. In Aquileia, however, this motif is not in a private villa, but in a basilica, which was erected soon after Constantine gave Christians freedom of worship, and was soon to be expanded by the addition of an external baptistery and another basilica. Bishop Theodore’s dedication of the building ‘with support from Almighty God and the heavenly flock’ is celebrated in an inscription in the centre of the mosaic of which this detail is a part. Other parts of the mosaic represent moments in the biblical Jonah narrative, when the sea-monster spews Jonah forth and when Jonah rests under a gourd (McEachnie 2017: 128–29). Within this context, the winged figures catching fish take on Christian connotations. Fish, fishing, and seascapes were prominent in early Christian imagery, both in texts and in art (Drewer 1981). Fish being drawn up from the sea could be an image of salvation, but in the parable of the dragnet, the emphasis falls on judgement. Matthew’s imagery begins with the possibility of salvation: all kinds of fish are gathered into the dragnet and the good ones are saved, while the bad are thrown away (Matthew 13:47–48). But it is the latter image on which Matthew rests: at the end of the age, angels will separate the evildoers from the righteous and cast them into the furnace (vv.49–50). References Drewer, Lois. 1981. ‘Fisherman and Fish Pond: From the Sea of Sin to the Living Waters’, The Art Bulletin, 63.4: 533–47 Holden, Antonia. 2002. ‘The Cultivation of Upper-Class Otium: Two Aquileian “Oratory” Pavements Reconsidered’, Studies in Iconography 23: 29–54 McEachnie, Robert. 2017. Chromatius of Aquileia and the Making of a Christian City (New York: Routledge)