On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo included the prophet Jonah among his series of scenes from the Old Testament. In the painting, Jonah, larger than any of the other Hebrew prophets, is leaning back in an awkward way, looking up at the ceiling itself. Many art analysts have proposed that Jonah was painted as Michelangelo’s alter ego. The prophet’s hands seem poised to hold a paint palette and his body is contorted the same way an artist would have to position himself on a scaffold to look up at the masterpiece. There is something in Jonah’s unabashed self-interest that both ignites the imagination and convicts the conscious. Most readers, with the narrator’s gentle nudging, recognize some part of themselves in the prodigal prophet. As much as Jonah horrifies us, we also identify with his selfishness and narrowmindedness. Michelangelo is unique in that he had the chance and talent to portray his Jonah likeness onto one of the most famous frescoes in Rome, but we are all with him in our reading of chapter four, projecting our own weaknesses onto Jonah, the most flawed of prophets.
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