Painted in 1633, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee is the sole seascape Rembrandt is known to have painted in his career^[1]. He shows the boat pitched violently by wind and waves, the helmsman wrestling the rudder, and a miserable crew member slung over the side retching into the water, a detail of pure invention that has no basis in the Gospel text itself^[1]. Rembrandt built the composition around a contrast between agitation and calm, setting the frantic labour of the sailors against the stillness of Christ, whose hands rest quietly, one on his lap and one at his heart, even as the disciples around him gesture in fear and confusion^[1].

Rembrandt placed himself among the figures in the boat, gripping the stays with one hand and holding his hat against the wind with the other, looking straight out at whoever stands in front of the canvas^[1]. He had already begun inserting his own likeness into biblical and history scenes earlier in his career, in works such as The Stoning of St Stephen and a Batavian history painting from 1626, and would continue the practice in other religious commissions of the early 1630s^[4]. In this crowded, storm-tossed boat, his own gaze meeting the viewer's works less as a signature than as an invitation into the scene, one more soul caught in the same danger as the men around him.

Just after 1am on 18 March 1990, two men dressed as police officers buzzed the staff entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, claiming they were responding to a disturbance^[3]. A security guard broke protocol and let them in; within minutes they revealed themselves as thieves, marched both guards on duty to the basement, and tied and gagged them^[3]. The men then spent eighty-one minutes moving through the museum. Their first attempt to take the large Rembrandts set off a motion detector, which one of them silenced with a kick before they cut The Storm on the Sea of Galilee from its stretcher, leaving the frame behind^[3].