Matthew 14:13–21; 15:32–39; Mark 6:32–44; 8:1–10; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15
Loaves and Fishes
Bartolomé Estebán Murillo
The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, 1671, Oil on canvas, 250 x 590 cm, Church of the Hospital de la Caridad, Seville; Album / Art Resource, NY
Holy Charity
Commentary by Mercedes Cerón
Despite appearances, this is not a straightforward depiction of either the Feeding of the Five Thousand or the Feeding of the Four Thousand. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s painting belongs to a complex iconographic programme commissioned by nobleman Don Miguel Mañara for the church of the Brotherhood of the Holy Charity in his hometown of Seville. There were also two allegorical paintings by Juan de Valdés Leal in the series.
The city was still reeling after decades of suffering caused first by the bubonic plague and later by food shortages that resulted in riots. Mañara chose this passage as an illustration of one of the seven corporal works of mercy, ‘To feed the hungry’.
The narrow format of the canvas, created for a specific location, restricts the suggestion of depth, and the groups of figures are distinguished by the changes in lighting. Murillo’s contribution to the series focused on the hope of salvation through individual good works. Painted in his characteristic warm, calm style, these seven scenes drawn from the Old and New Testaments provided the viewer with a hopeful guide to eternal bliss following the principles of the Counter Reformation. All the paintings emphasize the importance of kindness and compassion.
In contrast with the undefined multitude that populates the background, the figures in the foreground of Murillo’s painting are recognizable as contemporary Sevillian people. Murillo follows the Gospel of John, since he includes a young boy carrying a platter with two fishes as the centre of his composition (John 6:9). A mother holding a small child and an elderly woman watch the miracle unfold. These popular figures appear as witnesses who invite the intended viewers—seventeenth-century Sevillian churchgoers—to identify with the people profiting from Jesus’s teachings. The ‘young lad’ who chose to share his food embodies the generosity that Mañara intended to promote as an example for ordinary citizens.
References
Brown, Jonathan. 1970. ‘Hieroglyphs of Death and Salvation: The Decoration of the Church of the Hermandad de La Caridad, Seville’, The Art Bulletin, 52.3: 265–77
Lambert Lombard
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, First half of 16th century, Oil on panel, 104 x 110 cm, Snijders & Rockoxhuis, Antwerp; inv. 77.35, KBC Bank NV, Antwerp, Museum Snijders & Rockox House
From Far and Wide
Commentary by Mercedes Cerón
Lambert Lombard delights in the variety that can be found in a large gathering of people. Costumes, footwear, head-dresses, and physiognomic differences are minutely rendered.
The Gospels of Mark and Matthew include two feeding miracles, the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mark 6:32–44; Matthew 14:13–21) and the Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:1–10; Matthew 15:29–39). Lombard combined elements from both in an original interpretation arising from a close reading of the biblical texts. In the first miracle, Christ feeds his own people, while in the second his guests are described as ‘Gentiles’ (non-Jewish), which would explain the diversity of this crowd. For example, the black woman seen in profile at right rests her hand on the shoulders of a blond bearded man whose elaborately knotted turban differs from other types of head-dress worn by the men in the background, in a likely allusion to their distinct customs and ethnicities.
His followers are divided into small groups and sheltered under large parasols and makeshift tents set up by the apostles. Jesus’s disciples distribute not only food, but also kind words and comforting gestures. They listen intently to their guests, and they respond sympathetically to their needs, as shown by details such as a hand on a shoulder or a furrowed brow.
The seven baskets lying empty in the foreground by a fountain allude to the leftovers that will be collected once the banquet is finished and the guests are satiated—but a further five baskets can be seen being carried by the apostles in the background. According to all four Gospels, twelve baskets were left after Jesus fed the Five Thousand. Mark, however, mentions only seven baskets in the story of the Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:8).
The empty baskets refer to the virtue of frugality (waste is avoided), coupled with generosity. Other details in Lombard’s painting, like Jesus’s gesture of looking up to Heaven (Matthew 14:19; Mark 6:41; Luke 9:16) and the ‘green grass’ (Mark 6:39) that announces the nearness of spring and the Passover, only appear in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.
References
Cousland, J. R. C. 1999. ‘The Feeding of the Four Thousand Gentiles in Matthew? Matthew 15:29–39 as a Test Case’, Novum Testamentum, 41.1: 1–23
Malbon, Elizabeth Struthers.1993. ‘Echoes and Foreshadowings in Mark 4–8: Reading and Rereading’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 112.2: 211–30
Velde, Hildegard Van de and Timothy de Paepe. 2018. The Snijders&Rockox House a Surprising Museum in the Heart of Antwerp (Antwerp: Snijders&Rockoxhuis)
Francisco de Goya
The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, 1795–96, Oil on canvas, 146 x 340 cm, Museo Historico Municipal, Cadiz; Museo Historico Municipal, Cadiz, Spain/Bridgeman Images
The People Are Hungry
Commentary by Mercedes Cerón
This is one of three works painted by Francisco de Goya for a small chapel attached to the church of Our Lady of the Rosary, known as the Holy Cave, in the Andalucian coastal city of Cádiz, in Southern Spain. His depiction of the waterside miracle of the loaves and fishes belongs to a series on the theme of the Eucharist, and it had to fit in a lunette under the dome. The picture is still displayed in its original location, under the inscription ‘They all ate and were satisfied’ (Mark 6:42; Matthew 14:20; Luke 9:17).
In the 1790s, Spanish authorities were fearful of the possible contagion of revolutionary ideas crossing the border from France. In Goya’s picture, the hungry people who had gathered to listen to Jesus do not wait for their food. They approach the group of the apostles begging for something to eat. They can be seen behind Jesus and his companions, some extending their cloaks to receive the bread, some raising their arms in despair, some lowering their heads in shame or raising their eyes in a gesture of supplication, arms crossed over their chests.
Expressive hand gestures guide the viewer seamlessly through the miraculous events in the foreground. Next to an alarmed apostle, shocked at the size of the crowds, his companion prays while Jesus blesses the bread and John raises his hands in awe. At right, another disciple stretches out his arms to calm and welcome the people, leading our attention to the multitude in the background.
In early 1793, while Goya was staying in Cádiz with his friend, the merchant Sebastián Martínez, problems with grain supplies resulted in an increase in the price of bread that led the government to allow the import of cereals from North Africa. The individuals begging for food behind the apostles shared the plight of the people in the bread queues. They bring to the foreground the discontent spreading through the faceless crowds.
As in Murillo’s painting elsewhere in this exhibition, Jesus’s hungry followers here are the artist’s contemporaries.
References
Bray, Xavier. 2001. ‘Goya, un pintor religioso ilustrado: las pinturas de la Santa Cueva de Cádiz’, in Goya (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg), pp. 63–82
Torralba Soriano, Federico. 1983. Goya en la Santa Cueva, Cádiz (Zaragoza: Banco Zaragozano)
Bartolomé Estebán Murillo :
The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, 1671 , Oil on canvas
Lambert Lombard :
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, First half of 16th century , Oil on panel
Francisco de Goya :
The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, 1795–96 , Oil on canvas
Feeding the Multitude
Comparative commentary by Mercedes Cerón
Feeding your guests is an act of hospitality. A good host ensures that food is not just sufficient, but plentiful, and that guests are comfortable, sheltered from the wind and the sun. The Bible includes a number of feeding stories in which the motif of the banquet has been read as prefiguring the institution of the Eucharist. Breaking and sharing bread appears in them as a symbol of physical and spiritual nourishment.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand can be found in all four canonical Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:32–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15), and the Feeding of the Four Thousand in two (Mark 8:1–10; Matthew 15:29–39). The miracle emphasizes Christ’s caring concern and compassion, but also his hospitality and his generosity as a host.
The story has precedents and parallels in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, such as Elisha’s feeding of the one hundred (2 Kings 4:42–44). It also—like the Elisha episode—lends itself to being read in Christian tradition as an allegory or foreshadowing of the Eucharist. All but one of the Gospel accounts of this Feeding refer to the four key actions of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving bread, around which the Eucharist is sacramentally structured. John is the only evangelist who omits the breaking of the bread in his account of the miracle, possibly because he regarded this gesture as too obvious to need mentioning.
John also differs from the three other evangelists in his mention of the young boy who shared his own food and made the miracle possible (John 6:8–9). The Gospel of Mark focuses on the relationships between Christ, his concerned disciples, and the hungry followers, eager to be taught and inspired. In Mark’s version, the apostles appear worried but also helpful, and they follow Jesus’s instructions without fully understanding them (Mark 6:37). The reader is thus invited to identify with them and to trust Jesus, even when his words seem incomprehensible.
In all three paintings in this exhibition, the central motif is Christ’s gesture of blessing and the baskets in which food will be distributed and leftovers collected. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo follows John’s version of the miracle, while Lambert Lombard’s interpretation is a more complex blending of narratives, and Francisco de Goya’s sources are less clear. Their approaches to the representation of the crowds are also different. Traditionally, Jesus’s followers are depicted either as a gathering of individuals whose diversity provides the painter with an opportunity to display his originality and skills, or as an undefined multitude.
Artists like Lombard suggest the breadth and universality of God’s message by showing its recipients as individuals of varying ages, genders, status, and ethnicities. In Murillo’s and Goya’s works, lack of definition turns these individuals into a mass, which evinces the magnitude of Christ’s following and the extent of his miraculous powers. Both Lombard and Murillo divide the crowd into small groups: Luke refers to ‘groups of about fifty each’ (9:14–15), while in the Gospel of Mark ‘they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties’ (6:40). The wide sweep of Murillo’s landscape is populated by a large, expectant congregation, which in Goya’s interpretation becomes a barely sketched crowd agitated by a threatening, simmering sense of unrest.
Three evangelists—Matthew, Mark, and John—mention Jesus’s travel by boat with his disciples to flee the crowds (Matthew 14:13; Mark 6:32–33; John 6:1–3). They sailed across the Sea of Galilee in their failed search for solitude. The background of Lombard’s painting includes a seascape, where a shepherd looking after his flock near the beach recalls Jesus’s comparison of the crowds with ‘sheep without a shepherd’ (Mark 6:34). The landscape is dotted with cottages, farms, villages, and towns where the apostles suggested sending Christ’s hungry followers as the day advanced. The mountains and the lake mentioned by the evangelists still contextualise Murillo’s depiction of the miracle, while Goya entirely dispenses with them to focus on the behaviour of the crowds.
Although the biblical texts only refer to the number of men fed by Jesus and his apostles, women and children are included in the foreground of Lombard’s and Murillo’s paintings, and in the background of Goya’s. Mothers holding their infants could recall traditional representations of Charity. Even in Goya’s depiction of a largely undefined crowd, the diversity of Christ’s followers is celebrated, and a bearded man in a turban and a silk cloak stands next to a figure in a brightly coloured striped shawl, similar to the fabrics worn by Spanish street-sellers.
Everybody is included and anyone is welcome.
References
Adams, Sean A. 2011. ‘Luke’s Framing of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and an Evaluation of Possible Old Testament Allusions’, Irish Biblical Studies, 29.4: 152–69
Bassler, J. M. 1986. ‘The Parable of the Loaves’, The Journal of Religion, 66.2:157–72
Carroll, John T. 2012. Luke: A Commentary (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press)
Collins, Adela Yarbro. 2007. Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press)
Davies, W. D. and C. Dale. 2005. Matthew: A Shorter Commentary (London: Bloomsbury Publishing)
Keener, Craig S. 2003. The Gospel of John. A Commentary (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers)
______. 1999. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.)
Commentaries by Mercedes Cerón