The
English artist and writer Edward Lear is best remembered for a children’s poem:
“The Owl and the Pussycat.” In his own time, Lear was known for topographical
views drawn and painted over four decades of travel in Italy, Greece,
Switzerland, Egypt, the Eastern Mediterranean, and India.
By
the mid-nineteenth century, many of these regions were controlled by the
British Empire, whose global ascendency underwrote Lear’s travels. Perched high
on a mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, the ancient fortress of Masada marks
the site of resistance to an earlier empire: here Judean fighters made their
last stand against Rome in 73 CE.