First, I saw the skull. It was dark heavy metal with screws in its ears. My eyes traveled down the art piece – I assumed that’s what it was since it was mounted on weathered wood and hanging on a wall – and I saw the fat clawed fingers of a beast.
I stopped to take it all in because it was so strange.
In the center was something that looked like aged parchment. As I moved closer, I saw the faint figures of angels on chariots. The juxtaposition of the angels, skull and fingers seemed incongruous to me.
So I Googled the angels on chariots to see what they meant. The image is from a woodcut by Gustave Doré, a 19th-century French artist who was both talented and prolific: “Draughtsman, caricaturist, illustrator, watercolourist, painter and sculptor, he was a protean artist who worked in the main genres and formats of his era, ranging from satire to religion, and from sketches to monumental canvases.”
The story of the angels itself is from the Holy Bible and represents one of eight visions for Israel by the prophet Zechariah. The angels are presented in Zechariah 6. Doré produced the images in 1866 in “La Grande Bible de Tours,” 241 woodcuts for a new edition of an 1843 French translation of the Latin version of the Bible called the Vulgate or Bible de Tours.
The illustrations, published in two volumes, were said to be among his grandest accomplishments. One site called the series “Doré’s Bible.” The volumes were very successful and marked a turning point in his life.
Here is the King James version of Zachariah 6 (verses 1-5):
“And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.
In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;
And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.
Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord?
And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the LORD of all the earth.”
The series of woodcuts are scenes from the Old Testament (from which the “The Vision of the Four Chariots” was taken), the Apocrypha and the New Testament.
Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” are considered the best renderings ever. Among his other illustrations are Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” One article noted that to this day, his illustrations serve as a model for film adaptions of some noted works, including Dante’s.
Born in 1832, Doré began creating caricatures at an early age and landed a three-year contract when he was in his early teens to work in Paris. Primarily self-taught, he became best known as an illustrator. He illustrated the classics, as well as novels and comic books, and the works of such well-known people as Balzac, Milton and Tennyson.
As for the piece at auction, I was not able to figure it out. I wonder what this particular artist had in mind.
