Three young winged figures stand close together on the ridge.
Bible in art · Genesis
The Three Angels Visit Abraham
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
In this plate Doré uses almost nothing but sky and bare ground. The engraver cut the long bands of cloud in fine parallel lines, so that the light of the low sun seems to lie on the whole sheet.
Three young figures with great wings stand barefoot on a ridge, their robes catching the light. Below them an old man in a dark hooded cloak kneels with his staff, his back to us. Behind him, in the dusk, are low tents and a seated figure.
From the text
- Abraham “looked up and saw three men standing nearby” (Genesis 18:2)
- He “bowed low to the ground” (Genesis 18:2)
- He had been sitting at the entrance of his tent (Genesis 18:1)
The artist’s own
- The visitors drawn as winged angels, as painters usually did — the text first calls them “three men”
- Evening light, while the text says “in the heat of the day”
- No oaks of Mamre: a bare desert ridge
Details
The three visitors
Abraham
An old man in a dark hooded cloak kneels before them, his staff in his hand.
The tents
Low tents and a seated figure in the dusk behind him.
Gustave Doré, French, 1832–1883. National Library of Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa), Warsaw — «Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu», vol. 1, Warsaw: M. Glücksberg, 1873 (acc. 75.267 A), tabl. 12 · Wood engraving after Gustave Doré’s design · National Library of Poland (Polona): the record of the volume gives the licence «Domena Publiczna» (Public Domain), «copyrightProtected»: false; the scan was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the library itself («Polona Upload», GLAM-Wiki partnership: “This file was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of a GLAM-Wiki partnership between the National Library of Poland and Wikimedia Polska”), linking its Polona record.