The Prophet Jonah before the Walls of Nineveh, 1655 by Rembrandt

In keeping with the artist's burst of creativity in the 1650s the drawings take on a new intensity of feeling. One could wish for a painting incorporating the excitement of the drawing of The Prophet Jonah before the Walls of Nineveh, in the Albertina, Vienna, of about 1655. The prophet is seen lamenting the wickedness of that most corrupt of cities, but what a change from the Amsterdam Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem of more than twenty years before. The prophet is in an attitude of lamentation and prayer, while the city is suggested by a vast expanse of blank wall, which takes the form of a great curved bastion. Translated into paint this would have been one of the artist's best works.