Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 1493), a history of the world containing numerous woodcut views made by Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519, the teacher of Albrecht Durer) and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff includes Jerusalem and the Destruction of Jerusalem which are the first imaginary views of the city to be printed.


Sebastian Münster (1489-1552) was one of the most important Christian Hebraists  of the sixteenth century. His translation of the Hebrew Bible, published in Basle in 1534, was recognised as a major contribution to the scholarship of the day. He was also a mathematician, cosmographer and cartographer. His Cosmogra¬phy (Basle, Henri Petri, 1544) included a woodcut view of Jerusalem made by Jacob Clauser (whose monogram appears on the bottom right of the engraving). This imaginary view of the Holy City was copied from an unknown source. The artist, never having seen Jerusalem, drew the buildings to reflect the contemporary European architecture rather than the actual appearance of the time. The Cosmography of Münster, with the woodcut view by Clauser went through thirty six editions in five languages. The Jerusalem view was also copied many times. One of the most sophisticated of these imitations appears as a superimposition on a map of the Holy Land published by Gerard de Jode (1509 -1591) in his Speculum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1578). A second edition was published by his son, Cornelis de Jode. The maps were engraved by the brothers Jan and Lucas van Doetichum after the description of Tilemann Stella (1529 -1589).


Peter Laicksteen, a Dutch astronomer, visited the Holy Land in 1556 and drew two maps of Jerusalem, one from on-site observations and one as a reconstruction from descriptions in the Gospels. These parallel maps were published in Antwerp in 1570 by Christiaan Sgrooten (1532 -1608), the Royal Geographer to Philip II of Spain, and copied by Frans Hogenberg (1535 -1590) in the first volume of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum published in 1572 by George Braun in Cologne. This parallel view is the first time in the history of mapmaking that a comparison had been made between the existing and historical topography. Braun and Hogenberg also published, in Volume II of the Civitates, a bird's eye view of Jerusalem as seen from the east.

This brings the story up to the time of the De Angelis plan. In the second half of the sixteenth century the Christian community of Jerusalem was divided into many antagonistic and warring sects with conflicting claims to the Holy Places. The rise of Protestantism also introduced a new scepticism as to the authenticity of the sites as identified in Catholic tradition. The most perplexing problem was the location of the Holy Sepulchre . As Jewish law at the time of the death of Jesus forbade the burial of anyone within the walls of the city it became important to ascertain the true course of the ancient wall that had been destroyed by the Romans and reconstructed by Hadrian in 135 A.D. Only then could it be proved that when the Empress Helena in the fourth century built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the site of the burial of Jesus, it was outside the old third wall of Jerusalem.

Of all the Christian communities, the most influential and established was a branch of the Franciscan Order, the Franciscans Minor Observant, who considered themselves the custodians of the Holy Land and guided the Christian pilgrims to the shrines. These friars, having volunteered for service in the Holy Land, lived a very arduous existance in the Convents of St. Saviour, the Holy Sepulchre and Bethlehem. Their chief (Custos) was rotated about every three years.

When Antonio de Angelis of Lecce in Apulia arrived in Jerusalem in 1570, one of the Franciscans, Gianfrancesco Della Salandra of Basilicata was searching for archaeological evidence to substantiate the claims for the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Della Salandra helped him obtain exact drawings and measurements of the sites in Jerusalem. De Angelis was a skilled artist and topographer who remained in Jerusalem for seven years before returning to Rome. (In 1579 he was appointed Custos, but refused the position).


It was on 8th September 1578, in Rome at the Convent of Santa Maria Araceli, that De Angelis published his plan. It is a large copper engraving measuring 55 x 81 in (140 x 206 cm) on two sheets joined in the middle and is in mint condition except that the edges have been trimmed (probably to conform to the folio volume in which it was inserted). It is a bird's eye view of the city as seen from the east and in a ribbon, supported by two putti, HIERUSALM is inscribed. A compass in the right hand corner uses a cross to point to the Holy City. The right hand side of the map has a long cartouche containing a numbered legend identifying the Holy Places. The cartouche is supported by a winged angel's face, and surmounted by the coat of arms of the Franciscan Order (the crossed bare arms of Jesus and the sleeved arm of St. Francis, each containing the stigmata in the palms, superimposed on the cross, rising from Golgotha.) Below the cartouche is the map scale corresponding to '200 steps,' a sixteenth century Roman 'passo' measuring about half a metre. In the lower left corner is a cartouche with a dedication to Cardinal Francisco Alciati (1522 -1580), the Vice Protector of the Franciscan Order. Alciati, a man of high erudition, lived in the Vatican and held many other important positions. He was, among other things, a Papal delegate to the Council of Trent (1545 - 63). The cartouche is surmounted by the Alciati family coat of arms, which includes a rampant elk (Alce), denoting the city from which the family took its name. Below the cartouche is inscribed ‘Marius Cartaro incidebat.' Cartaro, born in Viterbo, worked in Rome from at least 1560. He is known to have been in Rome in 1581 acting as executor of Antonio Lafreri's estate. After leaving Rome he worked in Naples in the Royal Library. His last  known work was published in 1613.