Peter Paul Rubens, A Miracle of St. Walburga

1610
Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany

This painting illustrates an episode in Walburga's legend in which the devil raises a storm in the English Channel to deter the saint, who has just left her home on pilgrimage. When she prays, God makes the tempest subside. The story says the sailors were so despondent of surviving by their own efforts that they threw overboard everything by which they might navigate out of the storm, but in the painting the oarsmen are still rowing and the helmsman is still at the helm.

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