Visual Constructs of Jerusalem ed. by Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (review)

This substantial volume consists of forty-four essays in English, originally delivered at the conference ‘Visual Constructs of Jerusalem’ held in Jerusalem on 14–20 November 2010. Impressive in its contributions, this anthology highlights some of the most recent scholarly and methodological approaches to the study of Jerusalem and its textual, visual, topographic, and symbolic representations. The essays range from iconographical and archaeological studies to historical and more theoretical examinations of sites, objects, and issues related to Jerusalem and its constructs. In this guise, the edited volume under consideration deliberately complements, and also supplements, the 1998 collection of essays The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art (Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998), as editors Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt outline in their Introduction.

One of the real strengths of this anthology resides in its wide-ranging contributions. The essays all look at the topic from various methodological perspectives, and address a variety of sources such as topographical and architectural constructs, maps, murals, sculpture, manuscripts, and printed books, as well as textual sources such as pilgrimage accounts. In addition to the array of sources and approaches and the historiographical discussions, the temporal and geographical parameters of the essays are equally impressive, ranging from the early Middle Ages through to the early modern period, and including material from Italy, Scandinavia, Croatia, Serbia, and Armenia, just to name a few.

Although not distributed equally, the essays are arranged in thematic categories – some more carefully defined than others – that explore topics such as the formations of loci sancti, architectural and topographical translations of Jerusalem, relics and rituals, maps of the city, the Holy Land, and Mappae Mundi, as well as literary works and Byzantine approaches to the topic. Many of the essays consider the specific historical and social conditions that motivated particular textual, visual, topographic, and/or symbolic representations or manifestations of Jerusalem and/or the Holy Land in a particular time and place. Some contributions also set in dialogue developments from the Latin and Greek ecclesiastical domains, while others consider links among modes of representation and translation across media that also span great distances in time and geography. All of the essays in the volume demonstrate good models of thorough scholarship. The contributions by Ora Limor, Barbara Baert, Nikolas Jaspert, and Robert Ousterhout deserve special mention for the careful and nuanced reading of the primary and secondary sources and the scholarly exposition of their arguments.

This volume is well produced with footnotes rather than endnotes, and the individual contributions are not particularly lengthy. The twenty-four colour plates are grouped together at the beginning of the book and a substantial number of black-and-white images appear throughout the rest of the volume. The individual essays, thus, could serve nicely in teaching various aspects of Jerusalem and its constructs in particular historical contexts.

Short bibliographies at the end of each essay, or perhaps a general bibliography at the end of the volume, comprising the most cited sources related to the topic from each of the contributions, would have been a welcome addition and could have served as a more general point of departure for future investigations by students and younger scholars in particular. Nevertheless, this impressive collection is a valuable addition to the library of any historian or art historian, and it is particularly noteworthy for its pedagogical value and the many avenues it encourages for further scholarly inquiries.