Image of the Week: Valley of the Cross, Sunset

© D. Yael Bernhard

Valley of the Cross, Sunset is the first image in my new calendar, The Jewish Eye 5783/2023 Calendar of Art.  My vision of this landscape came to me ten years ago as I was walking through Jerusalem's Sacher Park on my way home from the Bible Lands Museum.  For hours I had steeped myself in art and artifacts that date back as far as the 4th millennium BCE – far beyond what my mind, as a citizen of a 236-year-old country, could easily grasp.  Emerging into the late afternoon light, I felt my life had shrunk to a mere blip on a continuum of time that stretched thousands of years into the past and future.  I imagined the millions of sandaled and hoofed feet that walked on the ground beneath my feet over the centuries.  

The path across the park was familiar to me, as it led from an apartment in the neighborhood of Rehavia that I had rented several times, to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and nearby museum complex.  I had passed this panoramic view of the Valley of the Cross before.  This time it looked different.  Perhaps it was the softening of my senses from being in the museum, or the rosy sunset hues cast upon the ancient white Jerusalem stone of the buildings below.  I stopped.  

Out came my camera and sketchbook.  As I quickly drew the trees and bushes that form the frame in the foreground, I pondered the scene in the distance.  The Valley of the Cross monastery was built a thousand years ago, when the area outside the Old City walls was a veritable wilderness.  The structure is immense and foreboding, with over 300 rooms, and also served as a fortress.  Legend holds that the cross upon which Jesus was crucified was made from a tree that grew in this valley; and that the site was consecrated by Constantine the Great in the 4th century CE, giving it its name.  On another day, I walked down into the valley itself and did a painting there (to be the subject of another post). 

Paradoxically, I felt the only way to convey a sense of the immense span of time manifest before me would be to capture the present, fleeting moment – just one day, one hour, a single sunset among the approximate 365,000 this place had witnessed since the monastery was built.  I scarcely felt I had the right to grasp at such a flimsy straw of time – but what else could I possibly capture?  In Israel, only the earth itself is older than history, and nature slowly folds history back into herself.  I pondered the age of the rocks embedded in the earth by my feet, and determined to include them in the painting as silent sentinels of the passage of time.  How many passing travelers had stopped to sit on these rocks before modern-day tourists like myself came along?  Weary crusaders, caravans of traders, messengers on donkeys, seekers and wanderers . . . my mind overflowed with imaginings.  

The sun was going down and one more moment in history was slipping away; but my painting froze it in time for as long as the canvas lasts.  What is a landscape painting but a snapshot of a time and season?  Church steeples, Islamic minarets, tall cypresses and the boxy buildings of modern Jerusalem sprouted up in the distance, creating the present-day urban horizon.  The big trees in the foreground talked to the tiny ones clustered in the distance.  As always, I strove to create a "harmonious tension" between near and far.  

I didn't expect my visit to the Bible Lands Museum to inspire a landscape painting, of all subjects.  I never know what will trickle down from immersing myself in art, or how long it will take.  In this case, the ancient artifacts had sparked a train of thought rather than a visual concept.  It wasn't up to me to choose.  Sometimes I feel more like a servant or a disciple rather than an artist, following a mysterious will not my own.  I trust I'm in good hands – just like the pilgrims on their long-ago journey to 11th-century Jerusalem.

You can find The Jewish Eye Calendar of Art in my webstore or on Amazon.  Please tell your friends and family about it!  

Shavua tov – a good week – to all.


D Yael Bernhard
http://dyaelbernhard.com
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