imon. And Jesus said unto Simon, 'Fear not: from
henceforth thou shalt catch men.'"[2]

[Footnote 2: Luke, chapter v., verses 4-10.]

In the picture we see the two boats laden with fish, one containing
Jesus with Peter and Andrew, and the other containing the partners
hauling in the net. The lake stretches away in the distance until it
seems to meet the sky in a line of light at the horizon. On the
opposite shore are the people to whom Jesus was speaking before the
fishermen launched out. Others on the bank are watching to get some of
the fish which are not hauled in. There is a boat over there just
pushing off. Fishhawks hover overhead, and on the nearer shore are
herons.

Just as before in the Madonna of the Chair we saw how all the lines in
the picture were drawn as it were in a circle, so here it is the long
horizontal line on which the picture is built: the boats extending
across the foreground, the distant shore, and the horizon line
swelling into the upland. Some one has said that the boats are so
placed that it looks as if the figures were slowly passing before the
eye of the spectator.

[Illustration: THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES
_South Kensington Museum, London_]

Now this picture is not, like so many, painted on canvas or on wood.
Raphael was bidden to make designs for some great hangings or
tapestries for the chapel in the Vatican palace known as the Sistine
Chapel. He made his drawings, cartoons they are called, on a coarse
kind of paper, the pieces put together on a great frame, and these
cartoons were sent to Arras in Flanders, where they were copied in
tapestry by skillful artists.

Raphael intended to represent scenes in the lives of the Apostles, and
his series was in two groups of five each, the first centring about
the life of St. Peter, the second about the life of St. Paul. The
tapestries are in the Vatican palace, but seven of the cartoons are in
the South Kensington Museum in London. There they are kept with great
care, but they have led a perilous life. When they were sent to Arras,
they were cut in strips for the convenience of the weavers, and
pricked with holes. Then after they had been copied in the tapestries,
they were thrown aside, as so much waste paper, and lay in a cellar,
neglected, for a hundred years. Fortunately they were not destroyed,
and the fragments were found in 1630, by the great Flemish painter
Rubens, who knew their value. He advised King Charles I. of Eng