El Khasne, Petra

In February 1868 Frederic Church rode into Petra, the rock-cut city in what is now Jordan, with an American missionary named Stuart Dodge. He sketched the great carved facade the locals call El Khasneh, the Treasury, and wrote in his diary that it seemed to shine by its own light, a soft salmon color cut straight from the cliff. He painted this back home six years later. It is unlike the wide, panoramic views that made him famous. There is no grand distance here, just the towering stone face close up in shadow, with tiny figures at its base. Church designed the picture and its frame for the sitting room of Olana, the house he built above the Hudson, as a gift for his wife, and it still hangs there.