Bloemaert probably painted this work shortly after his 1591-93 stay in Amsterdam. There he would have met artists from Haarlem, the birthplace of Dutch Mannerism. Typical of Mannerist paintings, the main scene takes place in the middle distance. The story is related in all four Gospels. Christ miraculously fed five thousand of his followers with just five loaves and two fishes. The scene is framed and partly obscured by monumental twisted figures in the foreground, modelled in sharp contrasts of light and shadow and acid colours. The painting has an unusual structure as the original canvas has been glued onto wood which has numbered incisions all around (visible bottom left). They were probably intended for transferring the composition, possibly for a print.