Jesus Walking on the Sea
Gustave Doré, 1866 · John 6:19
The passage
So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.
John 6:19
About this plate
The widest and emptiest plate in the batch. A heavy swell running left to right, worked in long curved lines. In the left middle distance, a boat with a knot of figures in it. At the right, close to us and alone, a robed figure walking, the water breaking white round his feet.
Everything else is sea. Doré gives perhaps a tenth of the plate to people and the rest to water and cloud, and the two halves of the story are separated by an expanse of open swell that is doing all the work. You can measure the distance he still has to come.
John is precise where you would expect awe: they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs. Three or four miles out. Somebody was keeping track.
And then the reaction the verse records is not worship. It is fear. They see him drawing nigh unto the ship, and they were afraid. Doré draws the figures in the boat small enough that you cannot read a face, which leaves the fear entirely to the sentence and the distance.
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