Sarcophagus "of Jonah"

Photogallery

Sarcophagus "of Jonah"
Sarcophagus "of Jonah"
The Good Shepherd and Jonah

This famous sarcophagus (c. 300), reduced in the eighteenth century to the front only, was discovered in the worksite of the new St. Peter's at the end of the sixteenth century. It offers the most beautiful example of the sculptural cycle that the first Christian artists dedicated to the story of Jonah. On the left, there is the scene of the sailors who cast the prophet from the ship, feeding him to the "big fish", which here becomes a sea monster. The monster then spectacularly rejects the prophet, depositing him on a rock inhabited by animals, on which he finally reclines, higher up, in the shade of a castor oil plant that God provides to restore him. Other scenes are recognisable in the vast iconographic field: the resurrection of Lazarus, the two apocryphal scenes of Peter baptising his gaolers and Peter being arrested, and finally the symbolic figures of fishermen and a shepherd with his flock. The little that remains of the sides of the sarcophagus bears decorative plant motifs (clusters of cherries).