St. Peter in the House of Cornelius
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Acts 10:28
The passage
And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
Acts 10:28
About this plate
A pillared hall with a great slant of daylight coming across it from the upper right. Peter stands in the middle ground with a small group; in front of him, on the steps, people are kneeling and others sit along the edge. A figure at the right is caught mid-gesture, arm out, arguing or explaining.
The light does something specific here. It falls across the floor and the steps, not on the people, so the room is bright and the figures in it are not — a Roman house, full of daylight, with a Jewish fisherman standing in the middle of it.
The verse is the sentence in which the early church changes shape: Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
He says it out loud, in the man's own house, as the explanation for why he is standing there. Doré draws him mid-speech, and everybody in the room already seated.
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