That the sea both gives and takes — and in doing so, not only claims human lives — is conveyed by Jan van Kessel with a keen sense of drama. His confident brush, moving in short, decisive strokes of silver-grey and brown tones echoes the restless nature of the sea itself. Beneath a threatening canopy of clouds, a turbulent sea stretches out, upon which a ship flying a red-white-blue flag steers a course parallel to the dunes, its two sails half-furled. Against this background, deliberately treated with restraint, the bright, focussed foreground zooms in on marine life stranded on sandy rocks exposed by nature’s recent violence. Gasping for air, the still-living cod will not survive long on dry land and is doomed to share the fate of the flatfishes and pufferfish lying helpless in hostile terrain. Two gaunt Asian small-clawed otters appear to be feasting on this easy prey, while only the venomous pufferfish, attentively observing them, seems able to offer any resistance. This latter creature, like most of the exotic shells depicted here, would never wash ashore on a European coast. Van Kessel nevertheless composed this “still life” on the shoreline using real specimens — creatures of God, drawn from live, borrowed from the natural world. The small-clawed otters originate from Southeast Asia; the poisonous fish lives in tropical marine waters along the coasts of Africa, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and India; the pink-winged conch, or spider conch, originates in the Indo-West Pacific; and the porcelain shells are found in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the tropical Indo-West Pacific, Australia, and the Philippines — all brought back from distant maritime voyages. In contrast, the empty otter shells, oysters, cockle, pen shell, squid, whelk, periwinkle, cowries, and the mud snail are native to European waters. In constructing an allegory of the element Water, the painter deliberately sacrificed geographical plausibility in favour of anecdotal richness, primarily to display the astonishing diversity of treasures the maritime world has to offer — curiosities that captivated contemporary collectors. The convincing, lifelike rendering of the specimens and the virtuoso depiction of textures — most notably the extraordinary light reflections on the cod’s belly — would have been highly prized. Moreover, the painting’s modest dimensions suggest a patron or audience drawn from these collectors’ circles, as the wonders of the world or Naturalia, in cabinets of curiosities, and art were often closely intertwined.