Priests in tall hats carry a chest on long poles.
Bible in art · Joshua
The Destruction of Jericho
Philips Galle · 1569
SMK, Copenhagen
Philips Galle engraved this small plate, 20 cm wide, in 1569 after a design by Maarten van Heemskerck, as the seventh print of a series. A Latin line below, left out here, says that Jericho fell when the ark went round the city with the shout of the people and the trumpets.
Priests in tall hats carry the ark on poles, led by men blowing long trumpets, and soldiers follow with curved horns. Above them the wall and a great tower tip over in huge blocks, while on the right soldiers already run into the town.
From the text
- Priests carrying the ark round the city (Joshua 6:12–13)
- The horns sounding and the people’s great shout (Joshua 6:20)
- The wall collapsing and the people charging straight in (Joshua 6:20)
The artist’s own
- A city of the 1500s with a domed church and a Gothic spire
- Priests in tall hats like bishops’ mitres
- Soldiers in Roman-style armour
- Whole blocks of wall tilting in mid-air
Details
The ark
Trumpets
Men at the head of the procession blow long straight trumpets.
A curved horn
A soldier blows a horn that curls round over his head.
The falling wall
The wall and a great tower break into blocks and topple over.
Into the city
Soldiers run in through the gap.
A town of the 1500s
A Gothic spire and a domed church rise behind the ruins.
Philips Galle, Netherlandish, 1537–1612, after Maarten van Heemskerck. SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, KKSgb9960/8) · Engraving · SMK Open: "SMK has chosen to waive these rights. This means that all photos of Public Domain artworks on this site are also in the Public Domain and free to use." (SMK API record: "public_domain": true, "rights": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/")