ABSTRACT
Representations of Jerusalem abound in Western art. This is no surprise,
since artists in Europe-from Constantine’s Rome through the Reforma-
tion-served the Church and the states that supported it. One need mention
only the ascendancy of Justinian and Theodora, Charlemagne, Otto I, the fifteenth-century Duke of Burgundy, and the papacy to summon up a sug-
gestive succession of patrons whose commissions (both large and small)
depicted both the heavenly city and the earthly Jerusalem. In addition to
appearing in architectural monuments, symbolic and idealized representa-
tions of Jerusalem turn up regularly in European altarpieces, manuscript
illuminations, and panel paintings, in images of such subjects as the Passion
cycle, Three Marys at the Tomb, and the enthroned Madonna and Child. In
fifteenth-century Flemish panel paintings, Jerusalem is often viewed as the town beyond the windowofMary’s throne room in heaven. Away in the distance,
there is often a river, a walled garden, a church, all in brilliant sunshine.
And the city appears in printed books as well. Hartmann Schedel’s Liber
chronicarum of 1493, a compendium of world history, includes a famous
and often-reproduced image of Jerusalem (Figure 9.1). Bernhard von Brey-
denbach made a far more faithful representation in his 1497 woodcut view
of the city, reproduced here in a copy form 1645 (Figure 9.2).
