The prophet sits on a rock, hooded, his head bowed.
Bible in art · Isaiah
Isaiah
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
H. Pisan engraved this plate after Doré’s design for the 1866 Bible. Doré gave each of the great prophets a page of his own, usually a lone figure in a wide landscape.
Isaiah, hooded and long-bearded, sits on a flat rock with his hands in his lap and his head bowed in thought. Behind him a wide plain with a winding river runs to low mountains under a sky of torn evening clouds. Sharp leaves of agave rise from the shadows in front.
From the text
- “the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem” (Isaiah 1:1)
- “Isaiah son of Amoz” (Isaiah 1:1)
- He saw it in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Isaiah 1:1)
The artist’s own
- The prophet alone in a landscape at dusk
- Agave, a plant from the Americas that grew around the Mediterranean in Doré’s day
- A river valley and distant mountains
Details
Isaiah
The river
A river winds across the plain behind him.
Agave
Long spiky leaves rise in the foreground.
Evening light
The low sun breaks through the clouds on the horizon.
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.