She dances barefoot with her arms raised and beads swinging.
Bible in art · Judges
Jephthah's Daughter Comes to Meet Her Father
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
The engravers Pannemaker and Doms signed this plate at the bottom right, and Doré at the left. He had drawn it for the Tours Bible of 1866, and it was reprinted with the rest in many countries.
There is no house and no Jephthah here — only a bare hilltop under a wide grey sky. His daughter dances barefoot at the crest, arms flung up, beads swinging, while her friends follow with a tambourine, cymbals, a harp and a long trumpet. The light falls full on her pale robe.
From the text
- His daughter came “out to meet him with tambourines and dancing” (Judges 11:34)
- “She was his only child” (Judges 11:34)
- When he saw her, “he tore his clothes” (Judges 11:35)
The artist’s own
- Jephthah is left out — we stand where he would stand
- A whole group of musicians, with harp, cymbals and trumpet besides the tambourines
- A bare hill in place of the house at Mizpah
Details
The daughter
Tambourine
A companion shakes a tambourine high above her head.
Harp
Another young woman plays a small harp.
Trumpet
At the back a girl blows a long trumpet.
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. 58 · 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.