The Prophet Jonah

A photograph of a cast of the statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel (Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome), which Ruland (1876) catalogued as then in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. The cast was exhibited in the Italian court, created as a homage to Michelangelo and Raphael who was also represented with a painted reproduction of the Vatican Logge arabesques and an ornamented ceiling.  

The statue is one of the sculptures of the prophets of the Resurrection in the niches of the Chigi Chapel: Jonah and the whale is attributed to Lorenzetto (completed by 1519 and based on a drawing by Raphael), as is the statue of Elias, which was completed by Raphael of Montelupo in c.1523; Abacuc and the angel (1656-1661) and Daniele and the lion (1655-1657) were executed by Bernini.

The Chigi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo was the burial place of the Papal banker Agostino Chigi, who commissioned Raphael to work on a number of projects in Rome during the 1510s. Raphael was responsible for designing the chapel itself as well as all aspects of its decoration, which encompassed mosaics, sculptures, tombs and (probably) an altarpiece. The chapel remained unfinished at the deaths of both artist and patron in 1520.