[1] Doré himself created other replicas, of which two are known to be extant: one, significantly smaller, is in the Bob Jones University Picture Gallery in Greenville, in South Carolina; the other, almost as large as the original, is kept in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes.

The illustrations of his monumental Bible, published on December 1, 1865, to take advantage of Christmas sales, in all the capitals of Europe, gave him a reputation as religious painter.

Rediscovered in the 1960s, it was acquired by Oscar Kline, owner of the Central Picture Gallery in New York, before entering the collection of George Encil in 1984, who placed it on deposit in Vienna in the Votivkirche.

According to one of his first biographers, his friend William Blanchard Jerrold, the fact that this particular episode had never been represented previously in painting was evoked during a meal at George Grove in Sydenham in the company of the Rev.

Because of the large dimensions of the canvas, the painter did not really unified the perspective, to avoid deformations; but it is nevertheless rigorous: the vanishing point of the paving is located towards the foot of Jesus, while the lines of the architectures in the background converge on the statue of Caesar drowned in the mist.

Dressed in white, with his head bloodied by the crown of thorns, radiating a soft light, Jesus descends the steps which he seems to illuminate with his presence.

The soldiers brutally push the crowd to the right, spectators gesticulate; a whole range of feelings can be found in the attitudes of the innumerable extras who populate the painting: curiosity, compassion, pain, hatred, satisfaction...

But the composition of the painting remains very classic, even academic, with its large architectures reminiscent of works like The School of Athens, by Raphael, or The Wedding at Cana, by Veronese.

While falling within the contemporary imagery of Jesus, of the time, this "grand spectacle" painting, intended to impress a wide audience, seems to evoke future Hollywood blockbusters.

But to see only them would be to "reduce the artist to the rank of simple craftsman", while, in front of this painting, the viewer is emotionally carried away by the painter's force of conviction, his power to create space, to make present the multitude and the "majesty of the Savior, who directs himself, detached, in a calm serene, towards Golgotha ".

[12] Moreover, Nadine Lehni, chief curator at the Rodin Museum, analyzing the replica kept in Nantes in 1987, said that she was struck by "the gigantism of its composition and the vitality that emanates from it".