The painting “And we continue fishing.” The four fishermen depicted in the picture bear both a deeply symbolic meaning and a very concrete one. Although not the apostles are depicted, but the monks of the same community founded by Saint Sergius of Radonezh, the mention of fishermen directs our imagination to the apostles, who were mostly ordinary fishermen. When, at the call of Jesus, they followed him, according to the well-known saying of Christ, they became like “fishers of men”, that is, they were able to attract supporters and followers of His Teaching.
In the picture, the space opened wide in all directions. Following the Roerich’s symbolism, we already understand that this spiritual space and in it, at the command of Christ, the apostles “catch” human souls in order to enlighten them with true light. Christ himself is not in the picture, but we guess his symbolic image in the form of a rather widespread idea of him as the Sun.
One can come to this conclusion by also comparing Roerich’s canvas with the famous sketch of Raphael’s Vatican carpet on the theme of Wonderful Fishing. Roerich largely follows the compositional construction and drawing of the characters of the great Italian, but replaces the golden nimbus of Christ and his pink himation with a sunset sky and a disk of the day star.
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