Fragmentary Christian Sarcophagus with Jonah and the Sea Monster in the Princeton University Art Museum, July 2011

Roman

Place made: Italy

Fragmentary Christian sarcophagus with Jonah and the sea monster, end of the third century A.D.

Proconnesian marble

h. 35.0 cm., d. 45.5 cm., l. 115.0 cm. (13 3/4 x 17 15/16 x 45 1/4 in.)

Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr., Memorial Collection Fund

y1994-1

Gallery Label:

This relief is broken from a sarcophagus of the so-called lenos type, with rounded ends. In the scene to the right of the uninscribed central tabula, the prophet Jonah is shown sleeping beneath a gourd tree after being cast up by the great fish in whose belly he had lain for three days. The subject was popular in Early Christian art as symbolizing the Resurrection, an analogy drawn by Jesus himself (Matthew 12:40). As usual in this period, the “fish” is represented as a ketos, a sea monster with a serpentine body, fins, and a wolfish head, of which only the jaw remains. To the right of Jonah, next to a recumbent ram, are the legs of a draped woman, possibly an orant, with her arms raised and spread in prayer. The relief on the missing left half of the sarcophagus likely showed Jonah being thrown overboard by the sailors and swallowed by the ketos.

Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/fr/collections/objects/33917