Prophet Jonah

Jonah sits where the altar wall of the chapel curves over into the vault, so the surface under him leans out toward the people below. Michelangelo painted him leaning back against that curve, and Ascanio Condivi, a pupil whose life of Michelangelo appeared in 1553 and drew on the master's own recollections, explained why the figure startled everyone. The torso, foreshortened to recede, is painted on the part of the plaster nearest the eye, while the legs, which reach forward, lie on the part farthest away.

He was among the last figures painted on the ceiling, in the final stretch of the second campaign, and his place over the altar was chosen with care. In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ compares the three days Jonah spent inside the great fish with the three days he himself would spend in the earth before rising, and the museum calls Jonah the prefiguration of Christ.

The great fish is there behind him. Over his shoulder grows the leafy plant from the last chapter of his book, which God made spring up to shade the sulking prophet outside Nineveh, and then sent a worm to destroy.