A hooded rider looks at the ruins from his horse.
Bible in art · Nehemiah
Nehemiah Views the Ruined Walls of Jerusalem
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
Another plate cut by H. Pisan after Doré’s design for the 1866 Bible. Here he works mostly in dark greys, leaving only the face of one ruined tower bright, as if caught by moonlight.
Nehemiah, hooded, sits on his horse beside a broken tower, looking at the ruined wall and a gate beyond. His companions stand and kneel in the dark, one with his face in his hands. Water tumbles over rocks to the right, and a stormy sky glows faintly above the walls.
From the text
- “So I went out at night through the Valley Gate” (Nehemiah 2:13)
- He “inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down” (Nehemiah 2:13)
- “there was no room for the animal under me to get through” (Nehemiah 2:14)
The artist’s own
- Companions bowed in grief around Nehemiah
- A stream falling over rocks — perhaps for the Fountain Gate and the King’s Pool (Nehemiah 2:14)
- Bright moonlight on the tower and a stormy night sky
Details
Nehemiah
The broken tower
Its top is ruined; the wall is lit pale in the night.
The gate
An arched gateway in the broken wall.
Water
A stream tumbles over the rocks below the wall.
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. 105 · 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.