The Ascension
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Mark 16:19
The passage
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
Mark 16:19
About this plate
A high open landscape with the sea beyond. On the ground, eleven or twelve figures are gathered on a rocky rise, most with their arms up and their faces lifted. Above them and small — much smaller than you expect — a single figure stands in a break of light in the cloud.
The scale is the argument. Doré makes the departing figure roughly the size of one of the heads below it, so the plate reads as a group of people watching something get further away.
Mark's verse is one of the strangest sentences in the New Testament, because of how administratively it ends: So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. Received up, and then sat down.
After the whole gospel, the last thing the verb does is put him in a chair. Doré keeps his figure standing, still ascending, and leaves the sitting to the sentence.
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