The Aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre in Germany.
[Holy Sepulchre] / [Jerusalem]. Der H. Grabs Christi zu Jerusalem ausserliches ansehen. Andächtige Seel, welche eine begird hast, das H. Grab zebesuchen, aber wegen des Orthsentlegenheit… [14.9 x 9.0 cm].
[With:]
Innerliches ansehen des H. Grabs Christi. Gehe herzu mit Christlicher andacht, und demüthigister Ehrnbiethigkeit zu dem H. Grab, welches niemand ohne Heiligen Schauder, und größter Herzens angst besehen kan…
Augsburg: Klauber, s.a. [18th century]. [11.0 x 6.0 cm], [2] ff. etchings, the first with contemporary manuscript annotations on verso. The smaller etching trimmed inside the platemark with likely loss of address, both prints with toning and staining, folds, and remnants of mounting on versos.
Two very rare (no U.S. copies) 18th-century devotional etchings, published by the Klauber firm in Augsburg, depicting the Aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in exterior and cut-away interior views.
While the prints no doubt appealed to an audience thinking about the Holy Land proper, they are perhaps best understood as being part of the wider culture of architectural replicas of the Aedicule built across Europe from the Middle Ages onwards. The Heiliges Grab in Görlitz (1504) and Leon Battista Alberti’s Tempietto del Santo Sepolcro (c. 1458-67) in Rucellai Chapel in San Pancrazio, Florence, are prominent examples (see Probst, Pivia, and Kamm on this history).
Of note here is the fact that the text of prayer seen on the interior-view print (“Gehe herzu mit Christlicher andacht…”) is also found painted on the exterior of the reduced-size replica in the Cappelle di Altötting e del Santo Sepolcro (Altöttinger- und Grabeskirche) in Innichen (in the Dolomites, today in Italian territory, just across the border from Austria), which was built in 1653. Klauber’s prints no doubt would have appealed to pilgrims to Innichen or other such replica sites as much as they would have appealed to antiquarians or to the truly adventurous who hazarded the journey to Jerusalem.
The etchings depict the Aedicule as it appeared before it was severely damaged by a fire in 1808; It was rebuilt in the following year in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style.
The contemporary annotations on the verso of the exterior-view etching are German prayers related to the Sepulchre.
OCLC, KVK and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek locate versions of the interior-view print at the Moravská Galerie (Brno) and the Museum für Sepulkralkultur (Kassel). These resources do not locate the exterior-view print.
*Gisela Probst, “Sepulchrum Domini in Brackenheim: Zu Typen und Funktionen südwestdeutscher Heiliger Gräber im Spätmittelalter,” in Die mittelalterlichen Wandmalereien zwischen Rhein, Neckar und Enz, pp. 77-94; Paolo Piva, “Die ‘Kopien’ der Grabeskirche im romanischen Abendland: Überlegungen zu einer problematischen Beziehung,” in Roberto Cassanelli, ed., Die Zeit der Kreuzzüge: Geschichte und Kunst, pp. 96-117; Thomas Kamm, Sein Grab wird herrlich sein: Heilige Gräber als Zeugen barocker Frömmigkeit.