The Wise Men Guided by the Star
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Matthew 2:1
The passage
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
Matthew 2:1
About this plate
Night, and a column of riders picking its way down a rocky track. Camels, horses, men in tall headdresses, servants on foot with staves. Low on the left, close to the horizon and not much bigger than a lamp, is the star.
Doré has made it small. Every painted nativity puts the star overhead in a burst of rays; here it sits at eye level, at the far edge of the frame, and the caravan is turned toward it in a long diagonal that runs out of the picture. You have to look for it, which is exactly the situation the wise men were in.
The verse is only the setup. Matthew says they came from the east to Jerusalem, and says nothing at all about the journey. No distance, no hardship, no number of them. The tradition of three kings comes from counting the gifts.
So Doré fills in what the sentence leaves out, and what he fills in is effort. This is not a procession. It is a working caravan on bad ground at night, and the only light in the whole plate is the thing they are following.
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