Jonah Cast Out by the Whale onto the Shore of Nineveh

Cleveland Museum of Art

Jonah Cast Out by the Whale onto the Shore of Nineveh

Maarten van HeemskerckLinkedCulture matchlcp-8a54c0ff148d

Date
1566
Medium
Pen and brown ink over indications in black chalk, within brown ink framing lines; indented for transfer
Culture
Netherlands
Department
Drawings
Institution
Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID
674083

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In this dramatic composition, the Old Testament prophet Jonah floats midair after being vomited onto dry land by a giant fish. The artist Maarten van Heemskerck drew the composition as the second of four illustrations of episodes from the biblical book of Jonah, which describes how the prophet was swallowed by a fish and regurgitated after three days. Jonah’s trial was often interpreted as a metaphor for exile and redemption, or for Christ’s resurrection. Heemskerck was one of the most prolific designers of prints in the Netherlands in the mid-1500s. Working with the engraver Philips Galle in his native city of Haarlem, the drawing was indented with a dull knife for transfer onto a copperplate to be engraved. Heemskerck was an instrumental figure in bringing ideas about Italian art to northern Europe. Here, he incorporates architecture and figures reminiscent of types he saw and sketched on a trip to Italy in the 1530s. The artist’s rendering of a fish is neither a shark nor a whale, but rather a fictional combination of the two, a product of the artist’s knowledge of ornamental designs and his own imagination.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Provenance
Jacob Jansz Guldewaghen, Burgermeester of Haarlem | by descent to his son, Jan Jacobsz Guldewaghen | Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem [1597-1665] | 1669: his sale, April 9-10, 1669, Haarlem (Het Prinsenhof). | Adriaan Van der Willigen [Dutch, 1766-1841] | by descent to his nephew, Adriaan Van der Willigen II [Dutch, 1810-1876] | 1874: his sale, June 10–11, 1874, A.G. De Visser, The Hague, lot 111 (sold with full set of 4 drawings from the Jonah series); purchased by Dircksen | 1874–: with Dirk Dircksen, The Hague | ?–1947: Sir R. Brinsley Ford [1908-1999], London, England | 1947: Sold, February 26, 1947, Sotheby & Co., London, lot 30 “Four scenes from the Old Testament.” Purchased at the sale by Colnaghi, London (£50) | 1947: Sir Robert Witt [1872-1952], London, England | 1949: with Heinrich Eisenmann, London, England | 1950: with Elkin Mathews, Ltd, London, ca. 1950 (cat. 129) | before 1953–2024: Dr. Einar Perman [1893-1976], Stockholm, by descent to the present owners | by descent, Stockholm | 2024: (Sotheby's, New York, NY), sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH | June 3, 2024–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

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