Salom Italia's Esther Scrolls | Emily D. Bilski en Sharon Assaf

Menasseh ben Israel Instituut Joods Historisch Museum Essay Series in Jewish Culture and Art No. 1

Salom Italia’s Esther Scrolls and the Dutch Golden Age Sharon Assaf and Emily D. Bilski

Dedicated to our colleague and friend, Vivian B. Mann

This essay is published on the occasion of the exhibition: The Triumph of Identity:

Salom Italia’s Esther Scrolls and the Dutch Golden Age in the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam from 21/02/2011 till 03/07/2011 Published by the Menasseh ben Israel Institute and the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam Measurements are given in centimeters, height x width

Salom Italia’s Esther Scrolls and the Dutch Golden Age Sharon Assaf and Emily D. Bilski

Menasseh ben Israel Instituut voor joodse sociaal-wetenschappelijke en cultuurhistorische studies

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Introduction Sometime in 1641 the young Mantua-born Jewish artist Salom Italia arrived in Amsterdam. This thriving mercantile city, with its growing community of Portuguese Jews, was a promising place for a peintre-graveur to develop new ideas for ceremonial art using the print medium. During his Dutch sojourn, Italia invented an iconographic program commensurate with the sophistication of the Portuguese Jews, the intended market for his works, and he created an artistic language to convey the complex messages contained in his decorated Esther scrolls, the most important part of his oeuvre. These scrolls contain the text of the biblical Book of Esther, traditionally read by Jews as part of the celebration of the festival of Purim, which takes place according to the Hebrew calendar on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, which falls in late February or March.

Despite Italia’s many surviving works, which have been prized by private collectors and museums for centuries, only a few are dated and little is known about the artist.1 Yet close reading of Italia’s Esther scrolls and consideration of the context in which they were made – intended audience and patrons, and the milieu of seventeenth-century Dutch art – illuminates Italia’s ambitions reflected in the iconographic program he created. One of the hallmarks of these objects – and a quality that makes them particularly compelling – is the degree to which Italia seems to have taken into account the ways readers engaged with the scrolls in the act of reading.2 Recent research into Dutch art has shed new light on the complex relationship between text and image, on the ideological and moralizing messages embedded in paintings and prints, and the expression of Dutch national identity in landscape and history painting.3 These insights into the nature of visual communication in seventeenth-century Holland provide new lenses through which to view Italia’s works and help to elucidate the meaning of his Esther scrolls.

The Book of Esther recounts the story of the rescue of the Jews of Persia from annihilation during the reign of King Ahasuerus (probably Xerxes I, who reigned from 486 to 465 B.C.E.). Haman, the king’s vizier, after being insulted by Mordecai the Jew, who would not bow before him, plotted to kill all the Jews in the kingdom and cast lots (purim) to determine the day of their destruction. His plan was stymied through the intervention of Mordecai’s cousin, the beautiful Esther, Ahasuerus’s queen, whose Jewish identity remained hidden until she revealed it in the story’s dénouement. Guided by the righteous Mordecai, she persuaded the king to save the Jews and have the evil Haman executed. Having triumphed over their enemies, the Jews of Persia engaged in “days of feasting and joy,” a spirit of merry-making that characterizes the celebration of Purim. An undecorated parchment with the text of the Book of Esther is read publicly in the synagogue on Purim by a designated reader. Congregants follow the text in their own scrolls, which, in contrast to the reader’s text, are often lavishly decorated.

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Salom Italia created a corpus of decorated Esther scrolls over the course of the 1640s. He designed a number of different types that were produced in multiple copies using the technique of printing on vellum.4 Many of these scrolls contain depictions of scenes from the Book of Esther, representations of characters from the story, landscapes, flora and fauna. Over the course of a decade, Italia developed his ideas in response to the art around him, at the same time that he refined his skills as a draftsman. This essay examines several types of printed scrolls, and in order to facilitate our discussion we have assigned names to them based on a distinctive element in each type: the “roundel type” | fig. 1 | features roundels in which the text is inscribed; the “Palazzo Te type” | fig. 2 |, is distinguished by architectural motifs inspired by the Mantuan landmark| fig. 17 |; the “small ladies type” | fig. 3 | features arches topped by reclining female figures, and measures approximately thirteen centimeters in height; and the “large ladies type” | fig. 4 |, also features arches topped by reclining female figures, but is significantly larger, measuring approximately thirty centimeters in height.

We also consider a unique hand-illustrated scroll written by – and made for – the scribe Michael Judah Leon, referred to as “the Michael Judah scroll” | fig. 5 |.

Italia’s intended market for his work was the community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews whose members had begun to settle in Amsterdam in the 1590s, either arriving directly from Spain or Portugal, or Antwerp, Venice, Livorno, Rouen, Nantes, and the many other cities of the Sephardi diaspora.

The Portuguese Jews, who had been engaged in commerce in their former countries of residence, found in Amsterdam a trading economy suitable to their commercial activities, which mainly dealt in colonial commodities such as sugar, tobacco and spices.5 Portuguese Jews, following the contemporary Dutch trend, collected art, their tastes running the gamut from genre scenes to still life and history painting (including biblical scenes), prints, and books.6 For the former crypto-Jews who had secretly practiced aspects of their Jewish faith while presenting a Christian face to the outside world, the story of Queen Esther, who concealed her Jewish identity and ultimately parlayed that deception into saving her people, had particular resonance. While still in Spain and Portugal, the crypto-Jews had elevated the minor festival of Purim into a major holiday, and observed a three-day Fast of Esther in conformance with the biblical narrative, instead of the one-day fast decreed by rabbinic Judaism.7 The influence of their Catholic surroundings was seen in the veneration of Jewish “saints,” the most popular being Saint Esther and the celebration of her feast, Purim.8 As Miriam Bodian has noted, “the story of Esther, with its strong elements of identity, concealment, systematic religious persecution, and ultimate victory… allowed conversos to situate themselves in the mainstream of Jewish history and tradition… (and) suggested the possibility of deliverance and ‘return’ to the open observance of Judaism.”9

The Esther story had special significance not only for the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam, but for the Dutch nation. Many scholars have described and documented the Dutch identification with the Children of Israel: Amsterdam and the Netherlands were seen as the New Jerusalem and the Dutch “saw themselves as heirs to Israel’s covenant with God.”10 Episodes from the Bible became paradigms through which to relate the religious and political struggles of the Dutch against Catholic and Spanish domination, and consequently the Esther story became a popular subject for plays, poetry, painting and prints, and as decoration on household items.11 Specifically, the Dutch saw Esther and Mordecai as symbols of Dutch civic virtue and Haman as embodying their Spanish enemy; plays of the period went so far as to equate Haman with the Duke of Alba and Mordecai with William of Orange (William the Silent), the military hero of the Dutch victory against the Spanish, and Mordecai’s rescue of the Jews was likened to the militia defense of Amsterdam | fig. 6 |.12

Salom Italia among Amsterdam’s Jews of the Portuguese Nation Salom Italia would have been barely twenty-two years old when he arrived as a young engraver from Northern Italy to Amsterdam,13 the newest city of promise for Spanish and Portuguese crypto-Jews escaping the long arm of the Inquisition. Italia came from a family of Hebrew printers in Mantua and may have begun his training as a draftsman and engraver at his uncle Eliezer d’Italia’s Hebrew printing press, before it was forcibly abandoned in 1630 following the expulsion of the city’s Jews by invading Austrian troops.14 What transpired next in Italia’s early life remains a mystery, although we can draw some hypotheses as to his trajectory. After the expulsion from Mantua, Italia could have made his way to Venice, as did other members of the Mantuan Jewish community, among them Jews engaged in the arts, particularly actors and musicians.15 Venice, at the time, was a center of Hebrew book printing and the Jewish ghetto was home to a wealthy community of former Iberian Jews, who were engaged in a brisk trade with their Portuguese co-religionists in Amsterdam.16 The merchandise being shipped from Amsterdam to Venice included printed books from the Hebrew printing press of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, which may have alerted Italia to the potential for employment in Amsterdam. 17 Once in Amsterdam, Italia’s quest to find work probably led him to Menasseh ben Israel’s Hebrew press, which by 1641 had acquired an international reputation for the technical quality of its books and the rabbi’s scholarly renown.18 Within the first years of his arrival, Italia produced engraved portraits of two prominent figures from the Portuguese community: Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon “Templo” (1602-1675) and Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657).19 Leon seems to

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depiction of the figures of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus, first evident in the scroll made in collaboration with Michael Judah, dated 1643. The royal visit took place in May of 1642, and we know from its inscription that the scroll was completed by Purim of 1643, so the inspiration was fresh in the artist’s mind.

Why did Salom Italia leave Amsterdam? Was the printed scroll project a business failure?125 Did the increased financial pressures on the Portuguese community after 1654, with successive waves of new refugees, deplete the resources for purchasing luxury items? Or were unknown personal factors responsible? Italia was still in Amsterdam in 1649 (the date of his personal scroll); we then lose track of him until a document places him once again in Mantua in 1664, after which he disappears from historical record.126 If Italia did not ultimately enjoy the financial success he had hoped to find in Amsterdam, his project was nevertheless a unique accomplishment: he created an artistic language with which to express the complex histories of Portuguese Jews who came to settle in the Netherlands, and to reinforce their multifaceted identities. He incorporated aspects of their Jewish, Spanish, and Dutch cultural affiliations, as well as their erudition.

Viewing these works is an intimate experience; they are personal objects, created in proportion to the human body, meant to be physically handled. The small-scale illustrations encourage close reading and careful observation, and yet the scrolls simulate an encounter with monumental architecture, establishing a tension between the miniature and the massive. This is mirrored in the individual’s act of engaging with the scroll while in the company of a larger congregation, each person following the same text, yet doing so in his or her own way.

Within the scrolls’ imagery, other dialectics are established: between urban public space (the triumphal arches) and rural landscape, and between settled city life and peregrinations, reflecting the mobility of the Sephardi diaspora during this period, as well as the community’s intense involvement in trade.

Each scroll was thus a microcosm for the reader’s experience of the world. Finally, images from seventeenth-century Holland were linked to the vast spectrum of Jewish communal history – from biblical times to the recent past. Italia collapsed time and distance, merged history and allegory, linked the personal with the collective, and created a liminal space in which the viewer can wander. This space encompasses the mythic time of the reign of King Ahasuerus, centuries of Jewish life in Spain and Portugal, and contemporary seventeenthcentury Amsterdam.

Fig. 1 | Salom Italia (c. 1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, c. 1641, signed, detail of opening panel. Engraving and manuscript on parchment, h: 12.5 cm; l: 182.0 cm. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam

Fig. 2 | Salom Italia (c. 1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, c. 1641, signed, detail of opening panel. Engraving and manuscript on parchment, h: 20.2 cm; l: 250.5 cm. The Jewish Museum New York, Gift of the Danzig Jewish Community, D 76

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Fig. 3 | Salom Italia (c. 1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, c. 1643, signed, detail of opening panel.

Engraving and manuscript on parchment, h: 13.1 cm; l: 417.0 cm.

Braginsky Collection, Zurich, scroll 27 Fig. 4 | Salom Italia (c. 1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, 1643 or later, detail of opening panel. Engraving and manuscript on parchment, h: 28 cm; l: 580 cm. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 182/61 Fig. 5 | Salom Italia (c.1619-after 1664) and Michael Judah Leon (active 1624-1643), Scroll of Esther, dated 1643, detail of opening panel.

Hand-drawn and manuscript on parchment, h: 28.1 cm; l: 406.6 cm.

National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MSL 361879

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Fig. 6 | Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), The Triumph of Mordecai, 1617. Oil on panel, 51 x 71 cm. Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam

Fig. 7 | Statenbijbel (States General Bible), 1637, detail from opening of the Book of Esther. Printed book.

Library of the University of Amsterdam, Special Collections

Fig. 8 | Esther inviting King Ahasuerus to a banquet, detail from Salom Italia and Michael Judah Leon, Scroll of Esther, dated 1643. National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MSL 36-1879

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Fig. 13 | Entry of Philip III of Spain into Lisbon in 1619. From João Baptista Lavanha (1550-1624), Viagem da Catholica Real Magestade…, Madrid, 1622. Printed book.

National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Fig. 30 | Coenraet Waumans (16191661) after Anthonie van Dyck (1599-1641), Portrait of Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange.

Engraving, 25.4 x 19.7 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Fig. 31 | Queen Esther, detail from Salom Italia (c. 1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, 1643 or later. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 182/61 Fig. 32 | Coenraet Waumans (16191661) after Anthonie van Dyck (1599-1641), Portrait of Amalia van Solms, Princess of Orange.

Engraving, 25.4 x 19.5 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Fig. 33 | Ahasuerus’s banquet, detail from Salom Italia (c.

1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, 1643 or later. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 182/61 Fig. 34 | Esaias van de Velde (15871630), Merry Company in a Garden, 1614. Oil on panel, 28.5 x 40 cm.

Mauritshuis, The Hague.

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Fig. 35 | The procuring of Esther for Ahasuerus, detail from Salom Italia (c.1619-after 1664), Scroll of Esther, after 1643, signed. Engraving, manuscript and hand-drawn on parchment, h: 12.7 cm: l: 210 cm.

Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv

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Fig. 36 | Detail from Salom Italia, Scroll of Esther, c. 1643. Braginsky Collection, Zurich, scroll 27 Fig. 37 | Claes Jansz. Visscher (1587-1652), Ruins of the Huys te Kleef, c. 1610, number 12 from the series Pleasant Places. Etching, 10.2 x 15.6 cm. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Photo credits Figs. 2, 20, 21, 22, 27 | Gift of the Danzig Jewish Community, D 76. Photo’s by Richard Goodbody, Inc D76© 2011. Photo The Jewish Museum/Art Recource/ Scala, Florence.

Fig. 6 | Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam loan from Instituut Collectie Nederland.

Figs. 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 24, 29 | © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Figs. 7, 12, 26 | Bijzondere Collecties, Universiteit van Amsterdam, OTM OK 62-2015.

Figs. 4, 31 | Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Elie Posner.

Figs. 14, 16, 18, 19, 23, 28, 30, 32 | Collection Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Fig. 34 | Mauritshuis, The Hague Fig. 17 | HillCreek Pictures/Corbis.

Fig. 35 | Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv.

Fig. 37 | Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Fig. 3, 25, 36 | Braginsky Collection, Zurich.

Fig. 1 | Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam. Photo by Peter Lange.

Fig. 34 | Mauritshuis, The Hague.

Lenders The Jewish Museum, New York Victoria & Albert Museum, London Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv The Israel Museum, Jerusalem Braginsky Collection, Zurich Bibliotheek Ets Haim - Livraria Montezinos /Ets Haim Library - Livraria Montezinos, Amsterdam Bibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam / Library of the University of Amsterdam Library of the University of Amsterdam, Special Collections Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam Museum Het Rembrandthuis / Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam Portugese Synagoge / Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Stadsarchief Amsterdam / Amsterdam City Archive Universiteit van Amsterdam, Bijzondere Collecties/Special Collections

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1 The major source on Salom Italia is M(ordecai) Narkiss, “The Oeuvre of the Jewish Engraver Salom Italia,” Tarbiz 25/4 (1956): 44151 and Tarbiz 26/1 (1957): 87-101; when applicable we refer to Italia’s works with the numbers assigned to them by Narkiss. Though additional works and documents have since come to light, Narkiss remains the principal source.

2 Wolfgang Iser’s writings have influenced our approach to Salom Italia’s Esther scrolls, in particular The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

3 Mariët Westermann, A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, 2005), 9.

4 For a sixteenth-century Italian responsa on the halakhic validity of printed scrolls of Esther, where the text is printed and not written by a scribe, see Vivian B. Mann and Daniel D. Chazin, “Printing, Patronage and Prayer,” Images, A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture 2 (2008): 92-94.

5 Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585-1713 (London and Ronceverte: Hambledon Press, 1990), 420.

6 For Portuguese Jews as art collectors, see Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Portland, Ore.: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 308-309; Michael Zell, Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Berkeley: University of California, 2002), 7-32; Steven Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 2003), 76 ff.

7 Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1992), 10.

8 Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews, 116.

9 Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 15.

10 Shelly Perlove, “An Irenic Vision of Utopia: Rembrandt’s Triumph of Mordecai and the New Jerusalem,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 56 (1993): 38.

11 Madlyn Milner Kahr, “The Book of Esther in SeventeenthCentury Dutch Art” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 1966), chapters 1 and 2; Shelly Perlove and Larry Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2009), 139; Christian Tümpel et al., Im Lichte Rembrandts: Das Alte Testament im Goldenen Zeitalter der niederländischen Kunst (Munich: Klinkardt and Biermann, 1994), 106-10; Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews, 98ff.

12 Tümpel, Im Lichte Rembrandts, 106; Perlove and Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith, 139; Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews, 95ff.; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Rembrandt: The Nightwatch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 104-6.

13 Italia’s nationality and approximate age can be established from his testimony before an Amsterdam notary on July 1, 1644 in which he stated his profession as “Italiaanse Koopman,” an Italian merchant, and his age as twenty-five, making 1619 the year of his birth. In a second testimony from 1644, Italia stated that he was acquainted with an Amsterdam resident for the past three years, confirming Italia’s presence in Amsterdam by 1641, also the date appearing on his first signed work, a portrait engraving of Jacob Judah Leon “Templo.” See J. S. da Silva Rosa, “Salom Italia,” in Maandblad voor de Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland 1/ 6-7 (5708 [1948]): 214-22; and Narkiss “Oeuvre of Salom Italia,” (1956), 442-43.

14 The d’Italia Hebrew printing press was established by Eliezer

d’Italia in 1612; see Shlomo Simonsohn, The History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusaelm: Kiryat Sefer, 1977), 683-85.

15 Ibid., 667, and n. 17. According to Simonsohn some of the Jewish actors who were expelled from Mantua later returned.

16 Israel, Empires and Entrepots, 417-47, esp. 422.

17 Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: 148-54; see also L. Fuks and R. G. Fuks-Mansfield, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585-1815, Historical Evaluation and Descriptive Bibliography 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987).

18 Zell, Reframing Rembrandt, 58-98.

19 Portrait of Jacob Judah Leon Templo, Narkiss, no. 7; Portrait of Menasseh ben Israel, Narkiss no. 8.

In his forthcoming study on the Templo portrait, the contents of which he has been kind enough to share with us, Adri Offenberg notes that there are in fact two portraits

by Italia of Jacob Judah Leon, one with lace collar and one with smooth collar (see Alfred Rubens, A Jewish Iconography, rev. ed. [London: Nonpareil, 1981], nos. 1731, 1732). He concludes that the 1641 date is not secure, and is based on Leon’s temple model, which was completed in 1641. Offenberg dates the second portrait to c. 1647.

20 Adri K. Offenberg, “Jacob Jehuda Leon (1602-1675) and His Model of the Temple,” in Jewish-Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century: Studies and Documents, Jan van den Berg and Ernestine van der Wall, eds. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 95115.

21 Published by Nicholas Ravesteyn; Narkiss, no. 14. Adri Offenberg notes that the portraits were for sale separately and could be inserted in editions of the book on the request of buyers of an unbound copy.

22 Only seventeen portraits of members of the Portuguese Jewish

community were produced from 1620 to 1680, which Nadler attributes to the second commandment prohibition against graven images.

Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews, 83-87.

23 For example, in a statement before a notary dated to May 23, 1646, Italia appears with Manuel de Tovar at the request of Jorge Pereira and gives evidence of having mutual friends in Castello Branco in Portugal. See Da Silva Rosa, “Salom Italia,” 217. On the validity of this testimony see Narkiss, “Oeuvre of Salom Italia,” (1956), 442.

24 See Livro de Bet-Haim do Kahal Kados de Talmud-Torah Comessado em Pesah do Anno de 5399 em Amsterdam; Het begrafenisregister van Portugees-Israelietische gemeente Talmud Torah te Amsterdam 16391648, Introduction, text and index

by Lydia Hagoort in cooperation with W. Chr. Pieterse (Amsterdam, 2007), 73 and 96. We thank Mirjam Knotter for this information.

25 Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 654, n. 259.

26 Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca hailed Michael Judah as “first among the scribes” in the preface to the first prayer book published by Menasseh ben Israel’s press in 1627; see John A. Lane, “Nicholas Briot and Menasseh ben Israel’s First Hebrew Types,” in http://cf. uba.uva.nl/nl/publicaties/treasures/text/t12.html accessed October 2010. Michael Judah was also the scribe for the Portuguese community’s burial records beginning from the 18th of Nisan 5402 (1642), see Livro de Bet-Haim do Kahal Kados de Talmud-Torah, 58, n. 21.

27 National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MLS 36-1879; see Michael E. Keen, Jewish Ritual Art in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London 1991), 51, no.

34. Narkiss, “Oeuvre of Salom Italia,” (1957), 98, considered this a work related to but not by Italia. We are convinced that Italia created the decoration of this scroll due to

its style, iconography, and relation to his signed works.

28 Narkiss, “Oeuvre of Salom Italia,” (1957), 98.

29 The opening inscription on Michael Judah’s scroll emphasizes his role as scribe and owner. Italia also did not sign two hand-drawn Esther scrolls of the Palazzo Te type (see note 67), possibly for similar reasons. A dedicatory inscription generally records the name of the scribe or the scroll’s owner.

30 The opening panel is an amalgamation of the double cartouche that appears at the beginning of the small ladies type (fig. 3), and the acanthus leaf design along the opening scalloped edge of the large ladies type (fig. 4). The configuration of landscapes within cartouches along the upper borders and narrative scenes within cartouches along the lower borders already appears in Italia’s Palazzo Te type (fig.

2). Columnar figures placed within arches decorated with scrollwork, birds and insects appear in both the small ladies and large ladies types.

While the small ladies type is signed by Italia, the large ladies type, though by Italia, remained unsigned (see below).

31 Compare the hands of the columnar figure of Esther in the Michael Judah scroll with those of Ahasuerus and Haman in the Palazzo Te type scroll (Narkiss, no.

2; Jewish Museum, NY, D76).

32 Italia had difficulty rendering human anatomy; see for example the awkward angle of the sitter’s left wrist, hand, and elbow in the Jacob Judah Leon portrait; the figures in the scene of the taking of Esther to the king’s harem in the Michael Judah scroll; and Ahasuerus giving his ring to Haman in the Palazzo Te type scroll. See also, the figural scenes on Italia’s ketubbah (Narkiss, no. 4) in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (179/6); illustrated in Shalom Sabar, Mazal Tov: Illuminated Jewish Marriage Con-

tracts from the Israel Museum Collection (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1993), 83, pl. 24.

33 Narkiss, no. 13.

34 See Illustrated Bartsch, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century, Sebastian Buffa, ed. (New York: Abaris, 1983), 243ff., Bartsch 53 (280) – 65 (283). The Dutch Esther scroll in the collection of the New York Public Library (Hebrew Ms. 2, Spencer Collection), illustrated and written

by Raphael Montalto in 1686, uses additional motifs from Zancarli’s thirteen part series of grotesque patterns for the upper and lower borders running the length of the scroll; illustrated in A Sign and a Witness, 2,000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts, Leonard S. Gold, ed. (New York and Oxford: New York Public Library and Oxford University Press, 1988), 199, no. 16.

35 Narkiss, no. 3.

36 Based on the dream of the prophet Daniel (7:2-5). See also Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 11a: “‘…And behold another beast, a second, like a bear’ (Daniel 7:5), Rabbi Yosef taught that this refers to Persians, who eat and drink like a bear, and are clothed in flesh like a bear, and are hairy like a bear, and have no rest like a bear.” The commentary expounds upon the excesses of the Persian Empire, among them its greed as exhibited in Ahasuerus’s banquet.

37 A vase with myrtle branches in the cartouche above the figure of Esther refers to her Hebrew name, Hadassah; and a cat is in the cartouche above the figure of a servant, probably Harbonah. See Ida Posen, “Katalog der Bestände des v.

Rothschild-Museums,” Notizblättern der Gesellschaft zur Erforschung jüdischer Kunstdenkmäler 27-28 (1931): 10.

38 Esther 7:7.

39 The first type (Narkiss, no. 4), of which only two examples are extant, includes seven cartouches: six

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Menasseh ben Israel Instituut Joods Historisch Museum Essay Series in Jewish Culture and Art

Menasseh ben Israel Instituut voor joodse sociaal-wetenschappelijke en cultuurhistorische studies