Artibus et Historiae no. 17 (IX)
1988, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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COLIN EISLER - Power to Europe's Chosen Peoples. A New Maccabean Page for Louis XIV by Liévin Cruyl
In his discussion of two previously unknown drawings by Liévin Cruyl, the author points out the significant identification of Europe's rulers and their states with Israel. Cruyl's page for Louis XIV draws upon renderings of reconstructions of the Temple of Solomon, and it was that building which provided the point of departure for many of the leading palaces - the Escorial and the Louvre, among others. Not only did the identification of the monarchy with the Tree of Jesse - the ancestors of Christ, placing them among the descendants of David - justify its rule, such association was also made by the new mercantile republics. Venice and the Northern Netherlands, both perpetually rescued from and by the sea, associated their profitable economy with that of the Jews, whose way of life was freed from the communism so fundamental to the tenets of early Christianity.
