The Jewish Cemetery is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael. Painted in 1654 or 1655, it is an allegorical landscape painting suggesting ideas of hope and death, while also being based on Beth Haim, a cemetery located on Amsterdam's southern outskirts, at the town of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. Beth Haim is a resting place for some prominent figures among Amsterdam's large Jewish Portuguese community in the 17th century. Ruisdael presents the cemetery as a landscape variant of a vanitas painting, employing deserted tombs, ravaged churches, stormy clouds, dead trees, changing skies, and flowing water to symbolize death and the transience of all earthly things. The known provenance for the painting dates back only to 1739 and its original owner is not documented; since 1926, it has been owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts.Painting credit: Jacob van Ruisdael
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