Jonas Drieluik (Jonah Triptych)

A pocket altarpiece in three hinged panels. At the centre a man rows a crescent boat across a luminous sea, a great wave rising into a sleeping face crowned with female forms, a rainbow arching over. The form is deliberate: the triptych is the shape of the church altarpiece, and Jonah's three days in the belly of the great fish were read by early Christians as a foreshadowing of Christ's three days in the tomb, which is why deliverance and resurrection hover here. The rainbow is the sign of God's covenant after the Flood. In a painting barely larger than a hand, Wiedijk folds shipwreck, rescue and rebirth into a single wave, a private altar to the sea's double nature.