View of Jerusalem with the Temple of Solomon 17th century Philippe de Champaigne French This large, vigorously worked drawing, made in red chalk on two attached sheets of paper, is a study for a view of ancient Jerusalem for the background of a painted Crucifixion given by the artist to the church of the Chartreuse de Vauvert in Paris (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Champaignes characteristic fidelity to biblical texts is here manifest in the research that underpinned his conception of the Temple of Solomon, the hilltop structure at upper right. Destroyed before the birth of Christ, but looming large in 17th-century theological and archeological debates, the Temple of Solomon was the subject of several illustrated treatises, including In Ezechielem Explanationes et Apparatus Urbis ac Templi Hierosolymitani published in Rome in 1596 with plans and elevations after designs by Juan Bautista Villalpando. While his temple may be based on Villalpandos elevations, its placement within a luminous