Crusaders surrounded by Saladin's army 1877

Curator: What strikes me immediately about this engraving by Gustave Doré, titled "Crusaders Surrounded by Saladin's Army" from 1877, is its overwhelming sense of scale and dread. Editor: Indeed, the sheer number of figures, seemingly infinite, rendered in such stark black and white creates an atmosphere thick with anxiety. The horses and riders are churning. One wonders what that dynamic energy suggests about both the victors and those doomed to defeat. Curator: Let's not forget Doré’s Romanticist leanings. Here, we see an Orientalist vision through a Western lens, where the drama and supposed "exoticism" of the East becomes the subject of spectacle. Editor: Absolutely, the spectacle. Note the symbolic weight he grants to the natural landscape itself. That imposing mountain seems almost to be a character in this historical theater, dwarfing the figures and underscoring the idea of an indifferent fate. I also believe that the dust, highlighted to show both sunlight and the gloom of potential death, further enlivens and informs the atmosphere. Curator: Considering the time it was made, the image perpetuates power structures. It reduces complex historical interactions to a simplistic, perhaps even biased, narrative. Where does agency lie, especially for the individuals lost in this crowd? Do their identities truly matter? It seems Dore wanted to showcase European Christian struggles over Muslims who were not from Europe, but were, rather, in their home and on their own land. Editor: The iconography does feel rather familiar—the clash of civilizations distilled into identifiable "types." But there is perhaps something interesting to be extracted if you consider that both "sides" appear equally consumed, trapped by their circumstance and history. What's left of the individual at the face of mass death? Curator: But there is also the point to be made of the exoticizing gaze toward "eastern armies". Dore essentializes an identity, not accounting for cultural or religious pluralism, a crucial aspect when interpreting artwork from a late 19th-century worldview. Editor: Dore asks viewers to reconsider this familiar image—that of grand narratives—as they play out across individual lives reduced to visual symbols, caught beneath an uncaring landscape. It also demonstrates his amazing dexterity, in engraving a sweeping action scene that can simultaneously evoke wonder and terror. Curator: Considering our conversation, one can recognize "Crusaders Surrounded by Saladin's Army" not as a celebration, but rather, a critical reflection of historical power and its effects, even on a relatively micro scale. Editor: Yes, as a poignant example of visual encoding: Doré leaves us much to consider through potent symbols—perhaps, about ourselves, even now.