Ein Karem Landscape

2003

“..Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it's enchanting, it's delicious..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Ein Karem (Arabic for The spring of vineyard) is a picturesque village southwest of Jerusalem. The village lies west of the line joining Jerusalem's Old City and Bethlehem, roughly midway between them, where the Sorek Valley begins its course toward the Mediterranean. A Byzantine pilgrim named Theodosius (530 AD) identified the site as the place where the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth lived ('a town in the hill country of Judea' [Luke 1:39-40].) and the birthplace of their son John the Baptist. In this magnificent landscape painted by Yoram Raanan, you can see the magnificent hills surrounding the village intertwined with stone houses and spruce trees next to a little spring. On the left you Raanan’s abstract rendition of the towering Church of the Visitation. This church, beautifully located on the slopes of a rocky hill and shaded by cypresses, is also known as the Church of the Magnificat (Mary's song in Luke 1:46-55), in commemoration of the answer Mary gave her cousin Elizabeth in the Gospel episode of the Visitation.

original height

102 cm.  40.16 in.

original width

131 cm.  51.57 in.

original media

Oil on Canvas

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