Cornelis
de Bruyn
A Draught of the City of Jerusalem
London, c. 1780
Unlike most of the mapmakers whose works are reproduced here, Cornelis de Bruyn (1652-1726) was first and foremost an artist. A pupil of the best Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, de Bruyn sought, quite literally, to bring a different perspective to his representation of Jerusalem. In his travel diary, he reports the great lengths to which he went on November 3-6 of 1682 to:
sketch the city, but not from the place of Christ's lamentations, because all the others who had painted there before me always portrayed it from this direction. I therefore, proceeded more to the south of the Mount [of Olives] so as to draw my picture of the town as much as possible from the south-east.
De Bruyn's panoramic view of the city is unlike any earlier likeness; it is almost photgraphic in its faithful capturing of the image of Jerusalem in the seventeenth century. Not surprisingly, the illustrated narratives of his expeditions were a great commercial success.
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"A
Draught of the City of Jerusalem" was originally published
in Delft in 1698 in Reizen van Cornelis de Bruyn, door de vermaardste
Deelen van Klein Asia ... Syrien en Palastina (Travels by Cornelis
de Bruyn Through the Most Famous Parts of Asia Minor... Syria and
Palestine).
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