In 1868 Hayez emblematically sealed his glorious experience as a history painter by donating to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he had received his artistic training more than half a century earlier, the imposing canvas depicting the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem "as a testimony of my grateful memory of the first studies done in this Academy […] happy to give one of the last works where my first ones exist ”. Together with the painting entitled The last moments of Doge Marin Faliero, destined for the Brera Academy, where the Venetian artist had taught for a good part of his life, it must be considered as a spiritual testament. a large corpus of preparatory drawings is known, it had a long gestation: the painter began the execution in 1860 and finished the work in 1867, when the painting was exhibited in Brera and was enthusiastically received by critics. The composition, dominated by an impressive visual impetus, shows the destruction of the temple at the dramatic moment in which the massacre is at its peak: the building is already in flames and the massacre is at its peak. The scene represented narrates the sufferings of the Jewish people deprived of their freedom and, as had already happened with Verdi's Nabucco, becomes a metaphor for the oppression suffered by Italians and a banner of Risorgimento values.In December 2017 the museum acquired an important nucleus of seventeen drawings relating to The destruction of the temple of Jerusalem (as well as a sheet referable to The thirst suffered by the Crusaders under Jerusalem), which are added to the six already present in the collections of the Galleries.