View of Jerusalem (Near the Mount of Olives)

View of Jerusalem
By Frederic Edwin Church

“Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.”
Psalms 48:1-2

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One of the world’s oldest cities and sacred to all three Abrahamic religions, Jerusalem has been a holy site for more than 5,000 years. In the 4th century, St. John Chrysostom wrote, “The believer belongs to no city on earth but to the heavenly Jerusalem.” A similar sentiment was echoed more than 1,500 years later by writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who said, “One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.”

View of Jerusalem was painted by acclaimed American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, a lifelong devout Christian (even to the point of his refraining from ever painting on the Sabbath). In 1867, after tragically losing their two young children to diphtheria and still reeling from the traumas of the Civil War, Church and his wife Isabel undertook a two-year pilgrimage to the Holy Land—despite Church then being perhaps the most famous painter in America. The trip profoundly moved the couple and led to a series of religious paintings, including this study for what Church considered his magnum opus, the monumental Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives, the vantage point for View of Jerusalem, became a special place for Church and his wife, who enjoyed the privilege of camping out overnight on its summit. “From Olivet at sunset,” Isabel Church wrote, “all your expectations are realized, and Jerusalem is beautiful.” That night, “we read appropriate portions of the New Testament,” Isabel continued, “and very sweet and sad and solemn they seemed.”

The Mount of Olives, which overlooked Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, was named for the olive groves that lined its hillside. An alternate name for the mountain, cited in ancient Jewish writing, is the 'Mount of Anointment,' after the anointing oil prepared from its olive trees that was used to anoint kings and high priests. It is thus significant that Jesus likely knelt under the covering of olive trees when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, right before His betrayal.

View of Jerusalem allows us to appreciate the grandeur and significance that this holy land holds for so many different peoples, capturing not only the city’s physical beauty but also evoking a sense of reverence for this timeless place. It serves as a poignant reminder that, despite political complexities or changing landscapes over time, Jerusalem remains an enduring holy symbol cherished by many. In the words of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.”

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