When visiting the Gemäldegalerie in Manheim in 1789 Jens Baggesen (1764-1826) payed special attention to a couple of (identified) marine paintings by Jean-Claude Vernet and considered them suitable illustrations of the sublime: “One no longer questions the nice anecdote about Vernet, that aboard in a thunderstorm he let himself tie up to the mast and when the ship was on the brink of going down, and the rest of the crew abandoned itself to devotional or blasphemous despair, he exclaimed in ecstasy: o God! This is indeed great! - the best text I know of for a dissertation on the sublime and a component of its history, which is more dear to me than everything that Longinus and every following theorist has folianted, quartered and octavated on this subject”. The quotation is a part of Jens Baggesen’s Danish Labyrinten (2 vols, 1792-93) about his travels in Europe covering important places as well as commonplaces.