It is a book completely full of the 190 illustrations from Don Quixote (120 of them full-page), all of the ones by Doré. I spent a pleasant afternoon studying the details and seeing the whole story come to life on these pages without any text other than that in the captions for the sketches. These were recently republished 100 years after the finish of Doré's fifty-one years of life. Its size allows for careful inspection of the illustrations, at 9 inches by 12 inches. 155 pages contain illustrations.

good reproductions.

Good illustrations with explanation.

Gustave Dore's illustrations were created for an 1863 French translation of the Cervante's classic. Dore's quickly became the definitive drawings for Don Quixote. A splendid companion piece to Cervante's most famous work.

A must have!!!!

Dore was such a giant, man

لقد أبدع غوستاف دوريه في تصوير دون كيشوت أيما إبداع
مثير جدا أن ترى ما تخيلته واقعا
تخيلنا دون كيشوت من خلال كلمات سرفانتس وكذلك فعل دوريه
فدأب على تصوير ملحمة سيرفانتس برسوم غاية في الأناقة ، حيوية ،نابضة بالمشاعر ،الفرح والحزن والالم والخوف والقلق كلها بادية في الرسوم
أنصح على الاطلاع على مجموعة دوريه بالتزامن مع قراءة دون كيشوت لإثراء التجربة
أحب رسومات دوريه كثيرا، نجحت في إحياء الشخصيات
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Exquisite!!! Gives life to Cervante’s text and is a very nice companion to the first modern Western novel.

Este libro no es para leer el Quijote sino para disfrutar de los prodigiosos grabados del artista francés Paul Gustave Doré.
Estas ilustraciones en algún momento decoraron las paredes del restaurante de emparedados "Sancho Panza" en el centro comercial Perisur de la Ciudad de México.
En ese lugar fue donde descubrí las ilustraciones de Doré.
El libro es una joya deliciosa para cualquier aficionado a Don Quijote o a los grabados.

With the name of Gustave Doré (1832-1883), the illustrations of Dante, of Ariosto and of Cervantes come first to mind. He also carried out others now less well known, such as Paradise Lost, the Bible and Rabelais. Doré had embarked at an early age, in his twenties, to illustrate the great books of Western culture.

But while with other works we can also think of other major illustrators who vie with Doré for stamping on our minds the visual equivalent to text-- for we also have, in the case of Dante Botticelli’s, Blake’s and Dalí’s astounding series--with Cervantes Doré has imprinted the definite image. And even if he has somewhat falsified Quijote’s looks, since he continues to hat the chivalric hero with the barber’s basin in the Second part of the book, when Quijote no longer wore it, it does not really matter. For us now, thanks to Doré, Quijote always wore his back.

This is an extraordinary selection of the total of 379 illustrations of the original collection. It includes the full 120 large, folio size, engravings, as well as 70 of the smaller ones.

This edition comes with a very brief preface which mentions other illustrators. The main ones were the also French Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), and a couple of examples of his are enough to disconcert the modern reader, so fixed are we with Doré’s version.



or, even in an engraved version, medium which we now also come to expect as more appropriate for the illustration of a text than an oil painting:



Couple's version of Quijote's meeting with the windmills (episode to which I will return with Doré), cannot drop the inclination to use allegorical figures to express abstract concepts, so we see the flying female figure of Madness and the frivolous Cupid figuring Love as always. Coypel was using the visual language of his times; the one with which he could express himself and the one with which he would be understood. And to us, now, it seems ironic that Coypel resorts to fantasy when illustrating a novel that ridicules overwrought fantasy.

Much harder to find in the web are examples of the German Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801), and I have found only one in the web and only of Sancho, when he is prevented from eating while he is Governor of his Ínsula, but which I have been unable to paste . I detect however a theatrical approach to his images.

We also have the iconic version by Picasso, but sadly, he did not illustrate the text. Just created an image.



Returning to Doré, and in particular to his large plates, I have been marvelled by several aspects: his framing and fragmentation of spaces; his use of light and dark; his use of texture (owes a great deal to Rembrandt); his command of the various sceneries (whether these are Oriental, Courtly, Rural, or Natural-Romantic). But the most striking aspect is his intelligence and this is best exemplified by my favourite scene, selected as the cover of the book by Dover, showing Quijote and Rocinante being lifted off by one of the wings of the gigantic windmill. The foreshortened Quijote together with a fraction of the mill’s arm give wings and make Rocinante fly and convert him back to a fantastic horse that not even Pegasus could equal.




Having this on the side, while reading Cervantes, has been a lot of fun. The process I followed was to read first and then run to Doré’s illustrations excited with the anticipation of finding which scenes had he chosen to illustrate and see them in their visual splendour. I always embraced Doré’s proposal and I just feel sad that Cervantes himself had not seen them.

Ah, if I could command a Time-Travel machine and sit Miguel de Cervantes to leaf through Doré's version of his masterpiece.....

Amazing images and insightful attention to detail

Working largely with the illustrations, a most excellent experience.