Barefoot, leaning on a long staff, he reaches the top of the steps.
Bible in art · Luke
The Prodigal Son Returns
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
This wide plate, cut in the Pannemaker workshop, is one of two Doré gave to the parable of the prodigal son in his Bible of 1866.
Doré imagines the moment before the meeting. On the right, the son, barefoot, in a plain tunic and leaning on a long staff, comes up the steps by a ruined wall. On the left the household sits under a vine: the old father with his hand to his brow, grieving women, servants, children and a dog. Two women look out from a stair above. Nobody has seen him yet.
From the text
- “I will get up and go back to my father” (Luke 15:18)
- “So he got up and went to his father.” (Luke 15:20)
The artist’s own
- A grieving family sitting by the house — the parable tells nothing of them
- The son arriving unseen, while in the text the father sees him first, from far away
- Wide stone steps, a broken wall and a vine over the door
Details
The son
The father
An old bearded man sits with his hand pressed to his forehead.
On the stair
Two women lean over the wall and look out.
The dog
A dog lies on the ground beside the family.
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.