The Firstborn Slain
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Exodus 12:29
The passage
And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.
Exodus 12:29
About this plate
A brick doorway and a flight of steps in an Egyptian house. A boy lies dead across the stairs. Above him a mother has her arms round a second child and her face turned away. More figures are collapsed further up in the dark. Coming down the steps on the right, unhurried, is an angel with a sword held point down, and behind it others are moving through the house.
The angel is the reason this plate is hard to look at. It is beautiful, calm, and entirely uninterested. It is not fighting anyone, its sword is lowered, and it walks down a domestic staircase the way you would walk down your own.
Doré keeps the whole scene inside a house. No armies, no Pharaoh, no throne room. The tenth plague happens on a set of stairs where children sleep, and that decision is what separates this plate from every other picture of the same night.
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