Jonah Leaves the Whale's Belly

In 1597 Maximilian, the 24-year-old son of the Duke of Bavaria, took over the government from his father, and this panel was painted in Antwerp in just those years, around 1597 or 1598. Maximilian turned into a serious collector. In 1607 he fitted out a private picture gallery in his Munich palace, the Residenz, in the gallery that ran between his own apartments and his wife's, and he filled it with works chosen with real care, above all paintings by Albrecht Dürer and his generation. The museum records that this small Flemish panel comes from that chamber gallery. Its subject is the end of the prophet Jonah's ordeal. He had tried to flee from God on a ship, was thrown overboard by the crew and swallowed by a great fish, and three days later the fish spat him out. In Brueghel's day the story was read as a foreshadowing of Christ rising from the dead on the third day. The oak panel is 38 by about 56 centimetres.