Gustave Doré

"The character of his art, in which a very varied and lively inventiveness predominates, reflects the very otherwise ingenious taste of E. Delacroix, with whom he shares the dynamic and excited research, the chiaroscuro contrasts and the traits of environmental realism, without attempting to compete with him in creative richness and originality. (Valerio Mariani)"

"The orientalist vision of the Holy Scriptures even becomes popular with the illustrated editions of the Bible, from that of Gustave Doré of 1866, imaginative but with precise oriental references, to the very widespread one edited by James Tissot, who he inserts views of the cities, maps, architectural reconstructions and topographical surveys of the sacred stations with the aim of making biblical archeology reliable, otherwise distorted, as the curator claims, by the fervent imagination of the artists. In one sense or another, the drive to seek the living testimonies of the Holy Scriptures in the Eastern reality of the moment, and to permeate a disenchanted West, was relaunched in the second half of the nineteenth century by the neo-spiritualist attempt to reaffirm the primacy of faith in the era of scientific materialism . (Attilio Brilli)"