A rainbow on the right is reflected in the still water behind the smaller boat. Depictions of rainbows were rare in seventeenth-century art and were seen, by a generally Christian public, to represent Noah’s everlasting covenant with God in the aftermath of the Flood. The development of analytic geometry in the Netherlands provoked various explanations for the appearances of rainbows in the sky. In 1637, Descartes’ ‘Geometry’ had attempted to explain the refraction of light to the public. In this painting the rainbow is limited to three colours: red, blue and white. While this may allude to the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it may equally refer to civic strength within a specifically Dutch context.

Stylistically Peeters portrayed storm scenes as dramatic, theatrical events. The drama of his tempests is enhanced by prominent figural elements such as vessels struggling in the waves or threatened amid rocks. He elaborates this mood by piling rocks into distinctive bizarre shapes. Here, the undercut jagged forms, which stand against the battering of the elements, suggest the endurance of the land in its conflict with the sea.