The Construction of the Temple of Jerusalem

The Construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, painted around 1445 and held at the Harvard Art Museums, is an unusual subject in Pesellino's work—a secular or semi-sacred narrative from the Old Testament that emphasises human labour and architectural achievement rather than divine apparition or saintly virtue. The building of Solomon's Temple was a subject with particular resonance in Renaissance Florence, where the dignity of craft and the ambition of architectural patronage were highly valued. This panel is likely from a cassone or a narrative series, where Old Testament subjects could be treated with more detail and activity than sacred altarpiece images.

The construction subject requires depicting a building in progress—scaffolding, workers, materials—within a credible architectural setting. Pesellino's rendering of the Temple's rising structure shows his engagement with architectural perspective, and the figure groups of workmen give the scene an unusual vitality absent from his more devotional works.