Riders and horses rear and fall as the water closes over them.
Bible in art · Exodus
Pharaoh's Army Engulfed by the Red Sea
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
One of Doré’s great landscape plates, engraved by Pannemaker, whose name stands at the bottom right. The sea is cut in curling lines that rise into two huge walls of water closing from both sides.
In the dark foreground horsemen and their horses are swept away, rearing and falling into the waves. Far off, on a hill under a break of light in the clouds, a tiny figure stands with arms raised: Moses, with the people of Israel crowded around him on the far shore.
From the text
- “So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea” (Exodus 14:27)
- “The waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen” (Exodus 14:28)
- “Not one of them survived” (Exodus 14:28)
The artist’s own
- Moses on a hilltop far away, both arms raised
- Horsemen but no chariots to be seen
- Night and storm clouds — the text says “at daybreak” (Exodus 14:27)
Details
The horsemen
Moses
A tiny figure on the hilltop raises both arms.
The people
The Israelites crowd the far shore.
The wall of water
A huge wave curls over on the right.
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. 37 · 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.