Professor Woodfin is teaching a course on the art of Medieval Jerusalem this semester, so I got to add these fabulous images of Crusader and Mamluk architecture from his course textbook, Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade. It's a bit of a sensitive subject given the contentious history of Jerusalem and Queens' diverse student body, with sizeable numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students. The chronology of Jerusalem is pretty much just successive waves of domination by all these different groups for thousands of years.
On the plus side, it makes for some fascinating layers of history and architecture - centuries worth of renovations, additions, tear-downs, and reconstructions. For example, many of these 15th century Mamluk constructions repurpose 8th century carved Frankish stone, and then 19th century tile got added on top, creating layers of architecture that would seem to benefit from stratigraphy as much as parsing the surface. |
About the VR CoordinatorJacqui Hopely Monkell has been the Visual Resources Coordinator at Queens College since 2015. She maintains this website while juggling her other VR responsibilities. If you find something art history related that she might find interesting, drop her a line! Archives
January 2017
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