Hebrew manuscript painting in late medieval Spain: sings of culture in transition

sum of two units different worlds present themselves to the scholar of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from Spain. sum of two units distinct artistic idioms reflect the history of Spanish medieval judea its cultural identities, its socioeconomic background, and its religious and ideological labors One is nonfigurative, nonnarrative, an almost aniconic idiom, with a clear precedence for ornament in a turn of expression that reveals strong Islamic influence (Fig. 1) The next to the first tells the story of ancient Israel in a richly narrative, figurative method while in style it echoe in each respect the artistic taste of Christian Europe (Fig. 14) (1)

Neither dates nor provenances can convincingly explain the unravelling of these distinct artistic languages within the Jewish art of the Iberian Peninsula. They largely overlap, the Islamicizing aniconic idiom appearing about the 1230 in Castile, about 1300 in Roussillon, and then spreading to Catalonia and Aragon, where it remained popular from one extremity to the other of the fourteenth century; the other, more limited in time span and region, lay opened in Castile in the late thirteenth hundred and flourished in Catalonia between 1320 and approximately 1375 None of the examples of this latter collection is dated or bears an indication of origin, on the other hand prior research has placed them in these particular artistic environments and time frames.

The Islamicizing decoration is typical of a collection of Bible manuscripts; its dominant features are elaborate carpet pages--full page, abstract, aniconic decorations recalling the design of carpets--along with various other kinds of ornamentation. At a certain quantity of later stage a flat, rather abstract representation of the fane implements was added (Figs. 2 3) The figurative revolution of times on the other hand, depicting the story of the Israelites as told in the works of Genesis and Exodus, decorate a assemblage of Passover Haggadot, small contortions containing the liturgical text to be read at the Passover ritual meal. However, instead of accompanying the true copy and referring to the written account of the salvation of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, they appear as separate periods disconnected from the text--a narrative told in a pictorial language independently of the written word. Whereas before its appearance in Spain about 1230 the decorated Hebrew Bible already had a century-long tradition in the Middle East, the ill ustrated Passover Haggadah emerg in Europe as a novel type of book about 13002 Indeed, it had not become a separate whirl until the thirteenth century, having formerly been a part of the general prayer book

At first sight, the nearness of two different modes for different impressed signs of books would seem sufficient to explain the phenomenon of sum of two units such different artistic tastes existing side by means of side, an approach pursued often in past scholarship. (3) The sum of two units idioms were also presented in boundarys of artistic development and Chronology, (4) a point of view that somewhat eclipses the physical evidence, since it wait ons to overlook the continuation of the Islamicizing aniconic idiom in fourteenth-century Catalonia that parallels the figurative Haggadah cycles--not single at the same time on the contrary also in the same region and probably plane in the same workshops. (5)

It might be assumed that the aniconic attitude in Jewish art was guided by the agency of a strict observation of the next to the first Commandment (Ex. 20:4): (6) 'You must not make a carved image for yourself, nor the likeness of anything in the heavens above, or upon the earth below, or in the waters beneath the earth." (7) The avoidance of figurative motifs, however, looks to come from the Islamic aniconic attitude rather than a narrow interpretation of the biblical order (8) Rabbinic authorities mostly allow representational art in two-dimensional media, while the restriction prevails for figurative sculpture(9) The history of Jewish art has shown that the nearness or absence of figurative painting is not entirely a matter of observation of the law on the contrary owes more to acculturation. Within a Roman, grecian or Christian environment, Jewish art was oftentimes figurative, whereas within Islamic agriculture ornamental decoration was the norm.

All the extant illuminated manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula were produc within a Christian environment; no decorated works have survived from the Islamic period, although more [i]or[/i] less examples from other areas of the Islamic world have draw near down to us. From the ninth hundred onward Hebrew Bibles were decorated in the Middle East and North Africa, and they throw back a similar basic attitude toward decoration; we find the carpet page, as well as depictions of the sanctuary, although the Spanish versions of the latter differ significantly in detail from the earlier Middle Eastern exemplars. (10) Figurative painting did not play any part in this art.

It is the aim of this study to characterize the sum of two units idioms, to outline the paths of acculturation they mirror, and to shed light upon the potential audiences they may exhibit I shall suggest that the aniconic idiom, baseed in Islamic culture, arose from the Judeo-Islamic heritage linked with the cultural values of Sephardic judea (11) as manifest, for example, in the worldview of Maimonides's rationalist scholarship. The narrative idiom of the biblical revolution of times revealing a dialogue with Christian elderly Testament imagery, is embedded in the cultural ambience of Ashkenazic judea (12) as represented by northern French Jewish scholars and their Spanish proponent who championed a traditional, antirationalist worldview. The sum of two units idioms present themselves as faithful reflections of the cultural transition experienced through Spanish Jewry during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They evolv as a by-product of a cultural try that strongly affected the Spanish Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages Displaying cultural exchanges with the non-Jewish environment, the art of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in Spain beautifully illustrates the dynamics of acculturation in a period of cultural transition, not single within Jewry but also within the hosting culture