Nazareth, General View

In this lithograph, which was for The Holy Land series, Roberts allows a herdsman and his goats to lead the eye towards the town of Nazareth. On the plains below, Roberts’s camp can be seen. The ‘pencil’ minaret, seen in the middle of the town, is that of the White Mosque which was built between 1785 and 1812.

Previous travellers to the region had praised the beauty of Nazareth’s location. Robert Richardson, who was there in the late 1810s, described it as ‘the loveliest spot in Palestine…. it is as if fifteen mountains met to form an enclosure… they rise round it like the edge of a shell, to guard it from intrusion. It is a rich and beautiful field in the midst of barren hills; it abounds in fig-trees, small gardens and hedges of the prickly pear, and the dense rich grass affords an abundant pasture.’