Isaac Blessing Jacob
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Genesis 27:29
The passage
Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.
Genesis 27:29
About this plate
A dark interior with a curtained bed. Isaac sits forward, old and blind, his right hand out in front of him and his left resting on the head of the son kneeling at his knees. Jacob is bent right over, face hidden, wearing the goatskins. In the doorway at the back, in full daylight, Rebekah stands watching, and the world outside is bright with palms and camels.
Everything about the composition is about who can see. Isaac cannot. Jacob will not look up. Rebekah, who arranged all of it, stands in the light where she can see everything and says nothing. Dore puts her at the vanishing point so your eye travels to her last.
The blindness is drawn carefully. Isaac reaches with the wrong hand first, feeling forward into the air, and his head is tilted to listen rather than to look. It is a portrait of a man being deceived by touch and smell because sight has already gone.
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