The Creation of Light
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Genesis 1:3
The passage
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:3
About this plate
There are no figures in this plate. No ground, no tree, no animal — cloud, a break in the cloud, and light coming through hard enough to throw rays across the vapour. Below it a flat expanse of water runs to the horizon with a bar of shadow lying across it.
That water is the thing to notice. Genesis 1:2 leaves darkness upon the face of the deep, with the Spirit moving on the face of the waters, and Doré gives you exactly that — the deep, and then the interruption. The light is not illuminating a world. There isn't one yet. It falls on water and cloud and nothing else.
It is a braver opening than it looks. Doré had to begin a Bible of 241 plates with a scene containing no people, no action and no story, four words after the beginning. Most illustrators would have reached for the six days, or Eden.
Then look at the technique. The light is not drawn. It is the block, left uncut, with everything around it worked away into darkness. To make light in a wood engraving you remove material. The brightest thing on the page is the part nobody touched.
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