It is interesting to observe the sensation of urban agglomeration and continuity in the layout of a city that seems to be bursting at the seams, all the available space already taken up-a common phenomenon in these types of urban environments where resettlements and expansion burgeoned or declined depending on the moment, be it a time of war, epidemic or new conquest, and which, like the description of Clarice, led to the transformation of the city: “Populations and customs have changed several times the name, the site and the objects hardest to break remain. Familiar with the descriptions passed down through the Chronicles of the Crusades and travel books, the artist imagines a city in which the architectural aesthetics of the buildings recall the Flemish cities where he lived, with their characteristic stepped facades and Gothic features, a Jerusalem that takes shape through the cities he experienced personally. Gerard David takes a number of artistic licences in his representation of the city. As the heart of medieval Christendom, Jerusalem became a benchmark city, a model, a site of pilgrimage, and a place of convergence and divergence. The city’s appearance is in keeping with the typical urban planning of the Middle Ages and is dominated by a large circular temple, crowned by a dome, and a castle on the highest point of the land. They form a compositional parenthesis framed by the city in the background: an imaginary reconstruction of the medieval city-specifically, Jerusalem-with its walled layout, intertwining streets and a vital rhythm that persists in spite of the episode narrated in the foreground. The grief of the people who accompany Jesus in his dying moments is shown through their gestures and how they hold their body.
In this canvas the Dutch painter Gerard David recreates a city as the backdrop to the biblical scene represented in the foreground: the lamentation over the dead body of Christ on the cross. The new abundance made the city overflow with new materials, buildings, objects.” Italo Calvino describes clarice as a city being endlessly rebuilt by the passage of time, historical events and resettlements: “Put together with odd bits of the useless Clarice, a survivor’s Clarice was taking shape The days of poverty were followed by more joyous times: a sumptuous butterfly-Clarice emerged from the beggared chrysalis-Clarice.