Victims of the Lightning (Victimes de la foudre) 

Alphonse Legros created this etching, Victims of Lightning, capturing a scene of raw human vulnerability against the backdrop of a furious storm. Here, the jagged bolt of lightning isn't just a weather phenomenon, but a symbol of divine wrath, a force majeure, that has felled a figure beneath a gnarled tree. Note the woman's gesture of reaching out; this act of supplication or desperate protection echoes across centuries, appearing in ancient depictions of mourning and moments of crisis. We see it re-emerge in Renaissance paintings of the Madonna sheltering humanity. But here, there is no divine response, only the continued threat of the storm. Such a symbol, deeply embedded in our collective psyche, evokes a primal fear of nature's power, engaging us on a subconscious level. Legros taps into this shared memory, reminding us of our fragile existence, and the cyclical recurrence of human suffering throughout history.