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View of Nazareth
On 19 April, after one and one-half hours of
travel up a winding trail, Roberts saw below him "the beautiful
hamlet of Nazareth nestled as it were in the bosom of the lulls by
which it is surrounded." The city, which today counts almost forty
thousand inhabitants, was at the time only a small group of houses
encircling the monastery, founded in 1620, of the Franciscan fathers
who extended their hospitality to Roberts. The locality, where the
Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the Annunciation and in which
Jesus lived until Ins baptism, was a destination of pilgrimage as
early as the time of Constantine.
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Nazareth. The Fountain of the Virgin
"This fountain, with the groups of young women
round it currying their water jars was more suited for a picture
than anything I have seen in the Holy Land," wrote Roberts, on 20
April, of the only fountain in Nazareth. It was here, according to
one of the apocryphal Gospels, that the Virgin received the first
visitation of the Archangel Gabriel as she drew water together with
other young women her age. The fountain that is today shown to
pilgrims - built in 1882 and restored in 1967 - does not stand on
the exact spot as that which so fascinated Roberts.
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Nazareth. The Church of the
Annunciation
Since the earliest limes of Christendom,
Jesus" disciples and the descendants of the family of Mary
venerated the place in which the Virgin lived and in which the
miracle of the Annunciation took place. The first Western-style
basilica was budt here in the 5th century; on the remains of
that monument, Tancred, as Prince of Galilee, ordered the
construction of a sumptuous Romanesque church with a central
nave and two aisles. When it was demolished in 1263 by the
Turks, all that remained of the entire complex was the grotto
bearing the still-legible inscription Verbum caro hie factum est
("Here the Word was made Flesh"). In 1730, the Franciscan
fathers obtained official permission to build a new church; it
is its interior that appears in Roberts' drawing. The building
was enlarged in 1895 and then demolished in 1955 to make room
for yet another new church, consecrated in 1969.
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Saint Jean d'Acre, from the Sea
Saint Jean d'Acre enchanted Roberts at first
sight, when at about three in the afternoon on 23 April, coming from
Tiberias, he caught his first glimpse of the city "with the blue
Mediterranean.'" Its fortifications, which resisted even Napoleon
Bonaparte, the fleet of warships arrayed offshore, the Carmel
promontory ... all appeared, to his eyes, "a picture which would
have satisfied Turner himself." Spoken of as Akko in the Bible,
known later as Ptolemais at the time of the Maccabeans and later yet
as Colonia Claudii Caesaris in honor of the Emperor Claudius, during
the Cnisades the city, today again known as Akko, took the name of
Saint Jean d'Acre after the military order of Saint John. In
Roberts' time, the memory of Napoleon s wounded soldiers, whom the
Muslims had massacred in the Carmelite convent where they had sought
rejuge, had not yet, faded, and the exploits of Ibrahim Pasha, who
following a six-month siege succeeded in breaking down the city's
resistance, were still recent history. In Roberts' view from the,
sea, we, note the, dome of the splendid al-Jazzar mosque, built on
the. model of Saint Sophia, and the fortified citadel which was
later used as the central prison of the State of Israel.
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Cape Blanco
Roberts arrived in Cape Blanco, one of the most
suggestive natural beauty spots on the entire Syrian coast, on 25
April, in bad weather. This was an unfortunate circumstance for die
traveller ("A heavy rain in the morning obliged us to wait until the
middle of the day...") but favorable for the artist, who was thus
able to depict Cape Blanco as a thunderstorm approached: "The sky
was dark and louring; heavy clouds swept ewer our heads, and the
rolling surge beat with a thundering noise on the rocks. It was
certainly the most sublime scene, I had yet beheld on the coast of
Syria." Both the drawing and Roberts' observations in his journal
concerning the scene testify to the sensitivity to the sublime in
the natural world, typical of the Romantic: age, of this self-taught
artist who was very much in touch with the spirit of his times and
anything but immune to its manifestations.
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View of Sidon
Following a short stop in Tyre, Roberts proceeded
to Sidon, where he stayed for two days, 27 and 28 April.
The ancient Phoenician city, first contemplated by the artist "from
a little farmhouse with gardens of olive and mulberry trees", seemed
to him to be "one of the finest I have ever seen in this country"
and inspired many paintings. One of these is the view on the next
page of the fortified Citadel, a construction probably dating back
to Crusader times, which, is linked to the mainland by a causeway
bridge on four arches.
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Baalbek. Remains of the Western
Portico of the Temple of Jupiter ...
During his stay in the city, from 4 through 8 May,
Roberts drew the. magnificent remains of the temples of Baalbek from
many different perspectives. This plate shows the Temple of Jupiter,
the largest of all and built of a material similar to marble. Nine
columns on the northern face. Jour on the southern face and six on
the western side are the only ones still standing.
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... and a Portion of the Eastern
Portico
In this drawing, also inspired by a throughly
Romantic attraction for the ancient ruins, depicts the remains of
the Eastern Portico of the Temple of Jupiter. The fragments of
columns, with their Corinthian capitals, strike the
visitor's imagination for their grandeur in comparison with the the
human figures and the massive majesty of the pillars.
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Baalbek, General View
Once he had entered Le'banon and before heading
south to Beirut, Roberts took a side trip to Baalbek, a city of
ancient origin with superb ruins which had already attracted many
European visitors. The Baalbek of old owed its importance to its
position along the routes that linked Tyre and Palmyra. Some believe
that the name Baalbek derives from the ancient Semitic deity Baal;
others that it is a corruption of the Hebrew word bekaa, meaning
mulberry, a very common tree in the area. In the Hellenistic Age the
city was re-named Heliopolis. The Romans held it in high esteem for
its strategic position: during Augustus' rule they built a fortress
and under Antoninius Pius, numerous grandiose temples. Under
Constantine, the buildings were first abandoned and then converted
into Christian churches before they finally fell into ruin following
the Arab invasion.
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Baalbek. The Circular Temple
Better preserved than that consecrated to Jupiter,
the Circular Temple, although smaller than its imposing neighbor,
was still larger than the Parthenon of Athens. It was originally
conceived on two levels, both colonnaded; the lower order with Ionic
capitals, the upper with Corinthian capitals. Visiting the ruins of
this temple, and indeed those of all the monuments of Baalbek, was
for a long time made impossible by the Lebanese Civil War.
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Baalbek. From the Fountain
Touched by the poetry of the ruins, as were many
other Western travellers of the age of Romanticism, Roberts confided
to the page of his journal dated 4 May the feelings aroused in him
during his stay in the Lebanese city: "Alas! what a change in all
bid nature herself - the fountain, the temple, the mosque are a mass
of ruins overgrown with lichen and wild flowers through the midst of
which the crystal stream still -winds its way; but where are the gay
citizens that once frequented its banks, where the maids who
resorted here to make their offerings to its protecting deity, where
the wealth and plenty that once belonged to this proud city?"
Although Roberts" exclamation might have a rhetorical sound to it
and his prose is certainly less than original expression, his
pictorial transpositions of his impressions, such as the romantic
"landscape with ruins' reproduced here, are much more convincing.
Shortly after having completed this masterpiece, Roberts ''took a
last look of glorious Baalbek" and '"took leave of Palestine." On 13
May 1839 he embarked at Beirut on the Magana for Alexandria. He
reached London "on 21st July, after having been eleven months
absent."
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