The picture of a bewhiskered gaunt old man comes to mind when mention is made of Don Quijote. For this we owe the nineteenth century French engraver Paul Gustave Doré. In the 1860s he was asked to illustrate a French edition of Cervantes’ novel. His drawings of the knight and his plump squire, Sancho Pancha, became so popular that they have practically become the standard, and now we find it difficult to imagine then as looking otherwise. (But to me, as will become clear in a moment, Don Quijote ranks among the handsomest characters in literature.)
Doré ‘s reputation mainly rests on his engravings, whether on wood or steel. His illustrations for the English Bible were a huge success. Among them was his engraving of the Widow’s Mite, in which he depicted a scene from the Gospel of Mark.
There Mark writes about Jesus observing the crowd putting money into the collection box. Naturally, the rich people put in large sums. But there was a poor widow who came and put in two small coins worth only a few cents. When Jesus saw this, he called his disciples and said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury, for they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
In Doré’s engraving, Jesus is standing, not sitting, as in Mark. This must have been the moment after Jesus saw the widow dropping the coins into the box, when he called the attention of his disciples, and had arisen to talk to them. The woman must have taken time to do what she did, long enough for an observer to notice her coins, although, being God, Jesus would have known of them supernaturally.
Behind the widow is a scribe in his long robe, a rich man waiting for his turn to make his contribution, expectedly a substantial sum, which nonetheless, as Jesus described it, came from his “surplus wealth.” The widow, head bowed, eyes blackened as a sign of mourning, has her right hand on the urn that contains the collection. Doré represents her as a young woman, contrary to the usual association people make of age and widowhood. The scene is packed with action—witness the hands of the leading characters: Jesus’ right gesturing towards the widow, and that of the latter touching the urn, suggesting that she has either dropped, or is in the process of dropping her small, copper coins into the collection. Her giving of all that she has is an act of absolute surrender to the love of the Lord.
At the time, illustrations like this served to reinforce the text of, or instruct the people who were unable to read, the Bible. Nonetheless, although meaning is the primary intent of religious art, the depiction in Doré’s engraving tends towards realism, but with a touch of the romantic in it—the widow seems winsome, lissom, a specimen of pulchritude.
But penury is no respecter of beauty, even as it is not a necessary guide to holiness. No matter my state of lack or affluence, in dealing with God and neighbour, depending on what I have, and God’s grace, I can shift from one to the other of two aspects of myself—widow and scribe. When I am the latter, I am as bloated and overclothed as the rich man in Doré’s engraving, geared up to give what I can skim from the surface of my fortune. When I am the former, no matter how skinny, emaciated and skeletal I look, how like Don Quijote, no matter if I have nothing to offer but my rags and misery, I will look beautiful in the eyes of God, who will look at me with favor, and cite me as an object lesson to His angels.