St. Paul Shipwrecked
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Acts 27:43
The passage
But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land:
Acts 27:43
About this plate
A gale, and a shore of black rock. In the upper left a wave breaks over a ledge where figures are hauling themselves up; below, men are in the water among timbers and cordage, one gripping a spar, one face-down. Out to the right, the wreck itself lies over in the swell under a torn sky.
Doré keeps the whole plate in motion. There is not a horizontal line anywhere in it — the rock, the water, the rigging and the cloud all run on the same set of diagonals, and the effect is that nothing in the picture has anything solid to stand on.
The verse is a small mercy inside a disaster: But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land.
Their purpose was to kill the prisoners so none escaped. A Roman officer overrode a standing order because he had taken a liking to one of the men in his custody, and the result was that every soul on board came ashore.
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