Abraham and the Three Angels
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Genesis 18:9
The passage
And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent.
Genesis 18:9
About this plate
Almost nothing is in this plate. A long empty ridge of sand, an enormous banded sky, and two groups of figures a long way apart. The three angels stand together on the left, robed, wings folded, on the ground rather than above it. On the right Abraham has gone flat on his face, arms forward, staff fallen beside him. Two camels are just visible on the skyline behind him.
Dore keeps the distance between them, and that is the whole picture. The angels have not arrived at the tent yet, and the old man has come out to meet them and gone down in the sand. Nobody is talking. It is the moment before hospitality, when he still does not know who they are and has decided to bow anyway.
Notice that the wings are the only thing that marks them out. Take those away and they are three travellers standing in the heat. Genesis says three men, and Dore draws men who happen to have wings rather than glory with a human shape.
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