Jonah by Susan Niditch

Author:Susan Niditch [Susan Niditch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Artistic Representations

The artistic cultures of late antiquity and the work of thirteenth- to fifteenth-century European illustrators of sacred books offer two excellent touchpoints for exploring the portrayal in visual media of Jonah’s experience with the fish. Jewish and Christian artists of these creative periods produced objects and settings for the communities well versed in the biblical tale of Jonah and receptive to its illustration and visual retelling. In particular, early Christian artists embraced images of Jonah, whose experience with the fish and under the shade of the planting are among the most common representations in early Christian art.98

Evidence for visual imaginings of Jonah and the fish in late antiquity can be found in various media including mosaics, painted scenes on plaster or frescoes, and carved work. Mosaics featuring Jonah are of special interest in the present study, and appreciation for the medium and the orientation of the artists requires some introduction. Mosaics are constructed from chips of stone or terra-cotta in various natural or glazed colors that are set in a surface layer of mortar resting on base layers of coarse mortar.99 As noted by art historian Roger Ling, the principal function of mosaic pavements was aesthetic, “to enhance the spaces that contained them.”100 He writes, “Tiny pieces of different coloured materials, when viewed from a distance, would merge to create gradations and modulations of tone that mimicked the mixing of pigments on a traditional painter’s panel.”101

As to content, Rachel Hachlili points to the theme of salvation implicit in Jewish portrayals of Aaron, Abraham, Daniel, and other biblical heroes and sees such scenes as “symbolizing traditional historical events, divine intervention, the covenant between God and his chosen people, and his protection of some and his punishment of others.”102 Roger Ling and Hachlili both describe the traditional, formulaic or conventionalized nature of the portrayals and suggest that artisans had at their disposal pattern books.103 Ling mentions a third-century B.C.E. Egyptian papyrus that refers to a pattern sent to a mosaicist at Philadelphia in the Fayum as a “guide” for his project.104 For all traditional artists working in verbal and nonverbal media, such patterns eventually become “inscribed on the heart” while being open to individual creative adaptations influenced by personal and local tastes.105 Mosaics could be applied to walls and vaults as well as to pavements, although the latter are far more common due to the cost of applications on high-up surfaces and the dangers involved in this sort of work. In such difficult-to-reach places, paintings or stucco reliefs would be more practical media,106 although one example of a Christian Jonah mosaic does decorate, along with other representations, a fourth-century vault in the mausoleum at Centcelles near Tarragona in Spain.107 The mosaics, Jewish or Christian, are placed in “buildings of high prestige.”108

Differences in Jewish and Christian orientations may inform, to a degree, the use made of Jonah in late antique settings, in mosaics as well as in other media. Hachlili notes, for example, that Jews employed various biblical scenes in floor mosaics,

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