The boy stands in a pale tunic, looking back.
Bible in art · Genesis
Joseph Sold by His Brothers
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
Doré fills this plate with people: traders, camels, brothers and herdsmen, all drawn close to us. The engraver kept the light on the center, where the boy stands in a pale tunic among the darker figures.
A trader with a staff grips Joseph’s tunic, and a bearded merchant leans over him with a hand on his shoulder. On a richly harnessed camel above sits a rider wrapped in robes. At the right the brothers in heavy cloaks look on. Behind, another group of men bends over the ground.
From the text
- They saw “a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead” (Genesis 37:25)
- Their camels carried “spices, balm, and myrrh” (Genesis 37:25)
- They sold him “for twenty shekels of silver” (Genesis 37:28)
The artist’s own
- Traders in the turbans and striped cloaks of nineteenth-century Arab travelers
- No money shown changing hands
- Joseph in a plain white tunic — no robe of many colors here
Details
Joseph
The trader
A man with a staff takes hold of Joseph’s tunic.
The camel
A rider in robes sits high on a richly harnessed camel.
The brothers
Bearded men in heavy cloaks watch.
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. 26 · 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.