For anyone concerned with the Middle Ages (and beyond), Jerusalem represents a challenge and an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration. For centuries, the holy city has presented itself to the observer as a liminal space in which the symbolic, legendary, allegorical, and metaphorical dimensions are inextricably superimposed on perceptible reality and tend to overshadow it, to such an extent that any distinction proves useless and even senseless. If there is one constant in the history of Jerusalem, it is its ability to bewilder, puzzle, and thrill its observers, whether they be devout pilgrims of the times past or scholars trying to make sense of it by elaborating questions and shaping new interpretative frameworks. This is because the holy city is not, and has never been, a mere geographical reality, but an embodiment of the different ways in which the human aspiration for a direct and physical encounter with the divine sphere has been conceived, experienced, and promoted by the many religious traditions that, over the centuries, have taken root in its urban—and extra-urban—fabric.

In her volume, Reimagining Jerusalem’s Architectural Identities in the Later Middle Ages, Cathleen A. Fleck chooses to deal with Jerusalem from a vantage point that intentionally embraces the different levels of reality—material, experiential, narrative, metaphorical, and anagogical—in which the holy city is involved. Far from pretending to formulate general assessments, she opts for an inductive approach, where the meticulous analysis of selected artworks is followed by a very close investigation of the multiple factors (visual, cultural, experiential, religious, political, performative, and so forth) that can be relied upon to elaborate an interpretation (or a spectrum of possible interpretations) of the general phenomena of which those same objects are an expression. Overall, her text warns us against the risk of too straightforward and univocal answers, that prove ineffective in any effort of getting a somewhat deeper understanding of one of the most elusive and inescapably multilayered realities in our world.

The author intentionally focuses on artworks that stand out for their different places of production, workmanship, cultural affiliations, techniques, materialities, dimensions, iconographic features, and functions, as well as, more crucially, for the different ways in which they are related to, and visualize their relationship with, the holy city. The volume is composed of monographic chapters devoted to individual objects, and a single glance at the table of contents makes it possible to understand how the arrangement of themes is structured not only according to a sequential and chronological order but also on the basis of chiastic and transversal relationships, which emphasize the typological and hermeneutic affinity of the works dealt with. This is revealed in particular by the central chapters being sandwiched between the first and the last, both of which are dedicated to the twelfth-century Frankish pilaster embedded in the main portal of the mid-fourteenth-century complex of Sultan Hasan in Cairo, and displaying three of Jerusalem’s architectural prominences (the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and the Tower of David). In the first instance, the author reconstructs the meanings and functions attributed to the holy city during the Frankish period and their possible association with a representational building of the Crusader court. In the second instance, the text investigates the reemployment of the relief as spolia in the Mamluk capital, which was instrumental to the Sultan’s self-promotion as ruler and defender of the most important Islamic pilgrimage site after Mecca and Medina. The vicissitudes of this relief enable the author to underscore the multiple meanings that its imagery, in combination with its materiality, were able to convey to beholders who were motivated on different grounds to acknowledge Jerusalem’s holiness and authoritativeness.

The multilayered complexity of medieval representations of the holy city and the latter’s capacity to arouse different, yet simultaneous and not mutually excluding responses is illustrated in the other chapters through further case studies that compare strategies of visual evocation of Jerusalem in distinctive cultural traditions. Two illuminated manuscripts, discussed in chapters two and five, serve as case studies to investigate the multiple meanings of loca sancta imagery for Latin viewers could be invested within both associative and dissociative terms. On the one side, the cycle of Christ’s life in a lavishly illustrated thirteenth-century prayer book (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 323) is interpreted as a support for a female beholder—assumedly a nun from Southern Italy—to engage in a “virtual” pilgrimage to the Holy Land, assisted by visual hints at the materiality of the holy sites and at the liturgical events in which they were involved. On the other hand, emphasis is laid on the dynamics whereby Robert I (1309-1343) of Naples claims for the title of King of Jerusalem, reflected in the painted decoration of the Clement Bible from ca. 1330-34 (London, British Library, MS Add. 47672), came to be visualized via formulas aimed at suggesting the symbolic conflation of the holiness-notion, epitomized by Jerusalem, with the idea of power embodied by Rome and its ancient monuments.

The inner core of the book sandwiched between the two symmetrically arranged “Latin” chapters, examines how the set of forms associated with the holy city was appropriated and developed among the Indigenous Christian groups of the Near East. Chapter three deals with a pair of mid-thirteenth-century glass beakers, preserved in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, that stand out for their display of painted figures moving or standing within or close to prominent buildings, whose shape distinctively hints at some of Jerusalem’s major landmarks: albeit made in an Islamicate way, they are understood as Christian Holy Land souvenirs that enabled their viewers, regardless of their denominational identities, to recall and mentally reenact the multi-confessional procession that, on Palm Sundays, kinetically united some of the most important holy spots (the Anastasis, the Ascension, the Golden Gate, and the Temple). The contemporary silver-inlaid brass canteen in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, is under the magnifying glass in chapter four: traditionally understood as an Islamic artwork on account of its technique which points to its making in Mamluk Syria, it puzzles its beholders on account of the Christological imagery it displays. Fleck assumes that it was made for an Eastern Christian user, possibly a Syrian Orthodox from Mosul, in the aim not only to suit his or her devotional needs but also to promote a local shrine as a surrogate for Jerusalem’s site-bound sanctity through a visual evocation of material markers that could be acknowledged by both Christians and Muslims.

Overall, the reader is offered a wide spectrum of research directions that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the extent to which Jerusalem-related imagery could be adapted to convey different, and often coexisting meanings. Some reconstructions are declaredly speculative, and it is difficult to follow the author, for instance, in assuming that the representation of the Temple with three domes in the Freer Canteen may have been intended rather as an evocation of the Holy Sepulchre, than as a compositional device inspired by the artist’s taste for symmetry, or that the specific shape of the manger in the Nativity of the Riccardiana Psalter may have rather worked as a visual hint at the Bethlehem basilica, than as an adaptation of the three-windowed motif that enabled viewers to establish a metaphorically dense parallelism with Christ’s tomb. Yet, Fleck’s purpose is not to persuade her readers of the rightness of one or the other thesis: she lists several possible interpretations of the same phenomena. Rather, she warns us against the temptation of binary thinking and encourages scholars to be brave, to become aware of the multivocality and multifaceted nature of premodern images, and to appreciate the latter’s ability to meet the expectations and needs of observers with different backgrounds in terms of culture, religion, and personal orientations.