The Darkness at the Crucifixion
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Luke 23:44
The passage
And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
Luke 23:44
About this plate
The darkest block in the whole Bible. The three crosses are silhouettes now, barely separable from the sky, and the sky has a torn bright edge where cloud is being lit from behind. Below, horses rear and men scatter — you read them as movement before you read them as figures. A spear falls across the lower right.
Doré has cut this one almost solid. There is more black on this page than on any other in the book, and the effect is that your eye keeps hunting for detail and keeps failing, which is what darkness actually feels like.
The verse is Luke's and it is clinical: And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Noon to three. He gives you the times, as though logging an eclipse.
The crowd in the earlier plates was standing and watching. Here everything is in motion and going the other way. Nobody in this picture is looking at the crosses.
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