Plünderung und Zerstörung des Tempels von Jerusalem

Van Heemskerck schuf diese Zeichnung 1567 als Entwurf für die 18 Blätter umfassende Kupferstichserie Die großen Katastrophen des jüdischen Volkes. Die druckgrafische Ausführung übernahm 1569 sein Haarlemer Künstlerkollege Philips Galle. Gezeigt wird die im Alten Testament (2 Kön 25, 10 und 13 – 17) überlieferte Episode, in der die Armee der Chaldäer die Mauern von Jerusalem stürzte und die erzenen Säulen und Schätze des Tempels raubte, um sie nach Babylon zu verschleppen (zur Druckgrafik: The New Hollstein, Heemskerck, 255).

In seinem grafischen Werk versetzt Van Heemskerck solche historischen Szenen bevorzugt in seine Zeit, um den moralisierenden Bezug auf seine unmittelbare Lebenswelt zu betonen. So bezieht sich die Plünderung und Zerstörung des Tempels von Jerusalem, wie auch gleichzeitige Arbeiten Van Heemskercks, auf den reformatorischen Bildersturm, der im Jahr zuvor, nämlich 1566, die niederländische Gesellschaft an den Rand eines Bürgerkrieges geführt hatte. Die Darstellung eines solchen Themas offenbart nicht nur die zerstörerische Gewalt aufgebrachter Massen, sondern spiegelt – sehr verschleiert – die geistige Auseinandersetzung der gebildeten Zeitgenossen mit dem vielschichtigen Problem der Bildkritik, das also nicht nur ein aktuelles Problem, sondern tief verwurzelt in der Geschichte war.

Auf eine für den Künstler typische Weise vereinigt dieses Blatt die in Haarlem besonders gepflegte sensible Federzeichnung mit Bildelementen, die aus der italienischen Renaissance inspiriert sind. In der Dichte und detaillierten Wiedergabe der archäologischen Denkmäler und kultischen Objekte erweist sich Van Heemskercks großes Interesse an der Antike, das auf seinen intensiven Studien in Rom fußte.

Bosch, Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt. Meisterwerke der Albertina, hg. von K. A. Schröder und C. Metzger, Albertina, Wien, Ostfildern 2013, Abb. 36, S. 78.

Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) made this

design for one of the twenty-two engravings in

the series The Disasters of the Jewish People (1569),

detailing the calamities suffered by the Jews in

biblical times (fig. 1).1 Engraved by fellow Haarlemer

Philips Galle (1537–1612), the title page explains the

purpose of the series: “The disasters visited on the

Jewish people are as a mirror, an example of the

punishment that one will receive for misdeeds, both

now and in the future.”2 The Albertina sheet depicts

an episode in 2 Kings 25:10 and 13–17, in which

Nebuchadnezzar’s Chaldean army breaks down

the walls of Jerusalem, steals the brass pillars and

treasures, and carries them off to Babylon before

relocating the Jews, the beginning of the Jewish

exile. Heemskerck’s composition shows two stages of

the destruction, that of the temple, which is hacked

with pitchforks by the soldiers, and the plundering

of the temple’s goods, which consists of a team

of oxen pulling an enormous, ox-footed basin

on a cart. The basin is filled with a Torah scroll,

candelabra, and precious metal objects.

After his Roman sojourn of 1532–36/37,

Heemskerck returned to Haarlem with sketchbooks

filled with drawings of ancient sites and buildings

that fueled the entirety of his career. The Albertina

sheet demonstrates his use of such sketches,

featuring an invented ruin that is evidently based

upon the artist’s knowledge of the first-century

Roman Colosseum, which he sketched several

times in Rome (fig. 2). Furthermore, the coffered

interior dome of the destroyed temple roof recalls

the second-century Roman Pantheon. Compared

to his print designs of the late 1540s (see [36, 72]),

Heemskerck’s drawing technique for Plundering

and Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem is finer

and more delicate. The artist incorporated stippling

and light flicks, often with a dry pen, to describe

the architecture’s degraded surface texture. The

technique afforded him the utmost control and

allowed for slight adjustments with the addition

of successive campaigns of wetter lines or flicks.

The corresponding engraving by Galle follows the

contours and forms of the drawing exactly, while

inevitably strengthening the lines as necessitated

by the engraving medium.

Heemskerck’s works from this period have been

interpreted as typological representations of current

events.3 For example, there were commentators

who compared the trials of the Jewish people to

those of the Netherlanders and their oppression

under Spanish rule.4 The work is best understood

in the context of the wave of Reformist iconoclasm

that had brought Netherlandish society to the brink

of civil war the previous year, in 1566, in which

violent mobs destroyed religious objects and artworks

as well as church architecture. Contemporary

Reformist debate addressed not only the nature of

sacred objects but also religious edifices (churches);

one Reformer, Petrus Bloccius (c. 1540–c. 1582), went

so far as to equate church spires with “Babylonian

towers.”5 At the same time, the intellectual and

material issue of destroying art objects was of

great consequence to Heemskerck and his fellow

artists. In the end, the ambivalent and multivalent

suggestive power of the drawing’s content allowed

for debate, sowing doubt over absolutes on views

that were ultimately irreconcilable.6

 

1. Veldman (NHD) 1993, part 1, 199–203, series nos. 237–58;

the corresponding print, 203, no. 255.

2. Translated from the Latin in Veldman 1995b, 236.

3. Saunders 1978, 59.

4. See Lettieri 1980, 72.

5. Bloccius was a Brabantine theologian and Protestant convert

who published this view in his Two Hundred Heresies of the

Catholic Church in 1567; see Jonckheere 2014, 189–95.

6. See Jonckheere 2014, 187–88, for a discussion of the efficacy

of suggestion over assertions of fact in religious and political

discourse of this period.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 37