A bearded man throws up his arm as he speaks.
Bible in art · Acts
The Apostles Preaching
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
Pannemaker and Doms cut this plate for the Bible of 1866. Doré drew it less as one event than as a picture of preaching in the open air.
On a rocky rise, three men stand against a pale evening sky; the bearded one in the middle throws up his arm as he speaks. Below, men in turbans sit on the slope and listen, and more people come walking across the wide, dim plain toward them. The figures on the hill are almost black against the light.
From the text
- “Peter stood up with the Eleven, lifted up his voice, and addressed the crowd” (Acts 2:14)
- “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem” (Acts 2:14)
The artist’s own
- A hilltop under the open sky, far from any city — the text places Peter’s speech in Jerusalem
- Only three men on the rise instead of twelve
- People still arriving across the plain
Details
The speaker
Beside him
A younger man in a hood stands with his hand on his chest.
The listeners
Men in turbans sit on the slope below and listen.
Coming closer
More people walk across the plain toward the hill.
Gustave Doré, French, 1832–1883. National Library of Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa), Warsaw — «Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu», vol. 2, Warsaw: M. Glücksberg, 1874 (acc. 75.267 A) · 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.