Jesus Blessing the Little Children
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Mark 10:13
The passage
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
Mark 10:13
About this plate
A wall and palms behind, a low stone step in front, and a press of people. Christ stands at the left with a child held up toward him; another child is being pushed forward by its mother; a toddler sits on the step in the foreground with its back to us. Around the edges the adults are doing what adults do in a queue — leaning, waiting, minding each other.
The plate is busy at knee height. Doré has put four or five children low in the frame, at their own eye level rather than ours, which makes the crowd read as very tall.
The verse is the objection, not the blessing. They brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. The disciples are trying to manage the diary.
So Doré draws the moment of congestion rather than the moment of blessing — too many people, small children underfoot, someone at the edge plainly trying to move things along. What the picture is about is an interruption that turned out to be the point.
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