The Work
Doré's Joseph Sold by His Brothers (from La Sainte Bible, 1866) depicts the moment of Genesis 37:28 with psychological complexity: the brother accepting the twenty silver pieces, Joseph in white bound and looking back in anguish, the varied expressions of his brothers ranging from active malice to passive complicity. Victorian readers immediately recognized the foreshadowing of Judas's betrayal.
Biblical Source
Genesis 37:26-28 - "Judah said to his brothers, 'What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.' His brothers agreed. So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver" - provides the narrative of Joseph's sale.
Artist and Iconography
Doré's plate uses the contrast between Joseph's white garments and the rough appearance of the traders to encode the moral polarity of innocence betrayed for money. The typological connection to Judas - thirty pieces of silver, betrayal by one who should have protected - was implicit for Doré's Victorian audience and gave the plate a New Testament resonance that pure Old Testament reading would not have generated.