The Prophet Jonah: The Iconography
| Early Christians
took the prophet Jonah to be a type of Christ because he was
in the great fish for three days (Jonah 1-2), like Christ in
the tomb. Thus he appears often in early Christian
art, especially funerary art where the hope of resurrection
would be especially important.
The 4th-century ivory above is typical of the period. On the right his fellow passengers toss him into the sea, where a great fish comes to swallow him. On the far left the fish has delivered him up to the land. To the right of that, he sleeps under a gourd tree. The next morning, he learns from God the lesson of the gourd. (The lesson is pictured as an angel, Greek aggelos being the word for "messenger" or "message.")
As in all paleochristian images of Jonah under the gourd tree, his reclining pose is copied from that of Endymion in classical images of Endymion and Selene (example).
There are no fewer than 57 images of this sequence of episodes in catacomb frescoes.1 Some samples are at right. The story is also presented in the form of sculpture (example).
After the paleochristian era the story's appeal to artists and donors diminishes considerably, though his image continues to be found among images of the prophets as a group (example).
Prepared in 2014 at Georgia Regents University by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English
1 Duchet-Suchaux, 198.
IN THE CATACOMBS (Click for full image and description):