Jonah Cast Out upon the Dry Land
Virgil Solis, 1565 · Jonah 2:10
The passage
And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
Jonah 2:10
About this woodcut
The great fish has its head up on the shore at the right, mouth open, and Jonah is coming out of it — mid-stagger, one arm thrown up, hair and beard flying. The water runs along the bottom of the frame. Behind, on the horizon, a small ship is still sailing, and a walled town sits among trees on the left.
Solis chooses the delivery rather than the swallowing. The ship in the distance is the earlier part of the story left where it happened, and the town at the left is where Jonah still has to go. The whole plate is one man being put down on a beach facing a job he ran away from, which is a more useful picture than the one everybody draws.
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