The Work
Doré's Belshazzar's Feast (from La Sainte Bible, 1866) captures the Babylonian king and his court frozen in terror as the disembodied hand writes its judgment on the palace wall. The contrast between the opulence of the feast and the spectral divine message creates the image's moral meaning: prosperity that rests on stolen Temple vessels and the humiliation of God's people is subject to sudden divine judgment.
Biblical Source
Daniel 5:5-6 - "Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking" - provides the central visual: the hand writing while the king watches in terror.
The feast is using the sacred vessels looted from the Jerusalem Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 5:2-4), an act of specific sacrilege that triggers the divine response. The judgment - MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN - is decoded by Daniel as "numbered, weighed, divided": the king's days are numbered, his character weighed and found wanting, his kingdom divided and given to others. That night Belshazzar was killed (Daniel 5:30).
Artist and Iconography
Doré's composition places the writing hand at the top center, the entire court's attention focused upward toward the inexplicable apparition. The table's luxury - vessels, food, attendants - is visible below, the contrast between material opulence and supernatural terror the plate's governing tension. The plate was a standard illustration for Victorian sermons on the transience of worldly power and the certainty of divine judgment.