He presses one hand to his head, his face half hidden in his cloak.
Bible in art · Jeremiah
Baruch
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
Doré gave Baruch a page of his own. The plate, cut by C. Laplante, whose name is at the lower right, is almost a study of architecture: a brick wall, a stone ledge and one sharp diagonal shadow divide the sheet into light and dark.
Baruch sits on the ledge wrapped in a heavy cloak, one hand pressed to his head, one bare foot showing beneath the folds. Rolled scrolls lie heaped beside him. He is not writing; he sits alone in a patch of sun against the wall, lost in thought.
From the text
- Baruch had written “these words on a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah” (Jeremiah 45:1)
- His complaint: “I am worn out with groaning and have found no rest” (Jeremiah 45:3)
- It was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah (Jeremiah 45:1)
The artist’s own
- Baruch alone, with no Jeremiah beside him
- A heap of rolled scrolls at his side
- A setting of plain brick and stone, lit from one side
Details
Baruch
The scrolls
Rolled scrolls lie piled on the ledge beside him.
A bare foot
It peeps out from under the heavy folds of the cloak.
The shadow
A sharp diagonal shadow cuts across the sunlit wall.
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.