The Madonna of the Fish (The Madonna with the Archangel Gabriel and St. Jerome)

Two names, one archangel

This entry needs its own caution flag. The catalogue title reads The Madonna of the Fish (The Madonna with the Archangel Gabriel and St. Jerome), which names Gabriel. In stable Western iconography, however, the fish is the attribute of the Book of Tobit, and the archangel attached to that story — and to the fish — is Raphael, not Gabriel. Both facts are recorded here without a ruling between them: the record names one archangel, the convention attached to the object in the record's own popular title points at another. Resolving that is a job for the picture and for the holding institution's record, not for a catalogue entry.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1513 and gives Raphael — the painter — with the style term High Renaissance. It measures 215 x 158 cm and the measured colour family is ochre. The recorded location is the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

A homonym worth stating plainly

This subject has a recurring problem with names, and this entry contains the sharpest instance of it: the painter is called Raphael and one of the three archangels is called Raphael. They are not related and confusing them produces nonsense. On this site the rule is that a painter's name is a painter's name, whatever else it happens to spell.