Jesus Stilling the Tempest
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Mark 4:37
The passage
And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
Mark 4:37
About this plate
This is the darkest plate in the batch. The boat is low in the frame, half swamped, and the men in it are a knot of straining bodies — hauling on the rigging, bailing, gripping the gunwale. Water is coming over the side in a white sheet. Above them the cloud is worked almost solid black, and the only light in the picture is on the breaking crests.
You have to search for Christ. In a plate this dark, that is the composition doing its work: the verse chosen is the one before the miracle, and so the picture is allowed to be nothing but weather and effort.
Mark is blunter here than the other gospels. The waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. Not nearly full. Full. The boat in this picture has already lost.
Two verses later he rebukes the wind and there is a great calm, and Doré could have drawn that instead — every illustrator does. He draws the sentence where the professionals have run out of options, and lets the reader supply the next line.
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