Der Prophet Jonas predigt in Ninive

Maerten de Vos (1532–1603) was a preeminent member

of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp whose

extant oeuvre of around five hundred drawings is

among the most plentiful of any sixteenth-century

Netherlandish artist. Many were made for the nearly

1,600 prints that De Vos designed, by supplying

drawings to numerous Antwerp print publishers for

engraving, printing, and distribution (see also [39]).

The present drawing was preparatory for

The Prophet Jonah Preaching in Nineveh, plate four

of a ten-plate engraved series titled Repentant

Sinners of the Old and New Testaments, published

by Philips Galle (1537–1612) in about 1580–90.1

The repentant in the drawing are the citizens of

Nineveh, including the king, who kneels in the

left middle ground. The urban inhabitants have

evidently sinned by worshipping a preposterous,

many-breasted pagan idol. Collectively, they hear

Jonah’s warning that God will destroy their city,

and repent. The verse on the print is from Jonah

3:5: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and

proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the

greatest of them even to the least of them.” Jonah’s

preaching and the city’s repentance take place

within an Italianate city, where the domed and

arcaded architecture and open plaza identify it as a

commercial, political, and religious center.

The drawing reveals De Vos’s knowledge of

Italian Renaissance architecture and art, such as

sermonizing scenes by Raphael (1483–1520) and

others. His knowledge was based on his presumed

trip to Italy in the 1550s as well as prints and tapestries

closer at hand. The compositional emphasis on

grand gestures and the figures’ dynamic movements

in space would have appealed to sophisticated

buyers with knowledge of the art and artists south

of the Alps. In this sense, we see De Vos working in

a different mode than that of his other designs in

this catalogue, Saint Luke Painting the Virgin [35]

and Adoration of the Magi [39], both of which appeal

to local models and devotional iconography derived

from Netherlandish traditions, despite their consistency

in technique. Here, Galle made no significant

changes to the design on the copperplate, following

the light and shadow of the wash and white

heightening with exacting attention to detail.

De Vos’s print designs were inevitably tied to

the political and religious turmoil in his home city

of Antwerp, the most turbulent years of which

began after he became a master of the guild in

1558. Unease toward some images and accusations

of idolatry, as portrayed in this sheet, became

topical in light of the iconoclastic riots throughout

the Netherlands in 1566. Furthermore, De Vos’s

drawing was made just one year after the end of a

lengthy siege on the city by Spanish forces led by

Alexander Farnese (1545–1592), Duke of Parma,

leading to Antwerp’s ultimate capitulation. After

years under a Calvinist civic magistrate, a thorough

re-Catholicization of the city began.

Despite being a documented Lutheran, De Vos

chose to stay in Antwerp even when Farnese

granted general amnesty to those wanting to leave.

He continued to work with several Antwerp print

publishers, creating materials that would appeal

to various audiences, including the city’s Catholic

leadership.2 Repentance for sin was stressed by both

Protestant and Catholic doctrine, with Protestants

insisting that man was saved not by particular acts

but by grace alone. In contrast, Catholics stressed

outward signs of penance, such as the scourge. Few

such overt visual cues appear in the series, and the

iconography sidesteps a sectarian reading. Instead,

the De Vos series emphasizes community contrition

and the return to collective rituals, a message

appropriate not only for the city and its leaders

but also for artists and print publishers seeking to

sell their works to patrons with diverse religious

viewpoints.3

 

1. Schuckman (HD) 1996, 44:227, no. 1140; for the series, 44:226,

nos. 1137–46.

2. Clifton 2001, 122.

3. The verse on the title page is Joel 2:13, emphasizing a return

to the faith: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and

turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the

evil”; see also Peters 2015, esp. 269–70.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 38