Epilogue: The Invisible Hand

Abstract

The book concludes with an epilogue, “The Invisible Hand,” that explores the afterlife of Doré’s imagery as it has been subject to creative erasure. The extent to which these images have been appropriated and adapted is foregrounded in the very process of their original creation, as Doré’s designs were transformed into reproducible matrices through the work of the engravers. The examples of cutting and overpainting of Doré’s work with which the book concludes should be understood not as iconoclastic but as entirely consistent with and the inevitable outcome of both the history of the Bible writ large and Doré’s intervention therein.