The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

The print is on two joined sheets and depicts the church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem and its surrounding architectural complex. Various figures fill the foreground: scholars, merchant, pilgrims and soldiers. The print is closely related to another woodcut of the same subject and of similar size, an impression of which can be found in the British Museum (1935,0713.6). That print has the date 1546 in a cartouche providing an approximate date for the present print. Dalle Greche was a Woodcutter and publisher who worked in Venice in the 1540s. He is best known as the publisher of the 1549 edition of Titian's 12-block woodcut of the Drowning of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea (see 22.73.3.131–138). The print is a striking example of sort of large-scale print that were produced in Venice in the sixteenth century and for which the city was justly famous.

Credit: Purchase, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, and Barabara Fox and Laura and Robert W. Stone Gifts, 2019