User:Drmies/Jewish engraving

Engraved frame for hand-written texts of the Book of Esther, by Salom Italia.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Modern period, there was a rich tradition of Jewish engravers in Northwestern Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, Germany, and Poland. These engravers served various, sometimes very local needs.

Backgrounds

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the one of the causes for a rich tradition of Jewish engravers in medieval times is the production of playing cards, invented by Jews (and Saracens); Jews, then, were likely involved from the earliest in the manufacture of playing cards, and the only known painter of such cards is a Jew, Meyer Chaym of Landau, who worked in Germany and is mentioned in a local council proceeding in 1520. At the same time, the sons of a portrait painter named Moses dal Castellazo worked as stamp cutters in Venice, and in 1521 illustrated a copy of the Pentateuch based on their father's designs. According to art historian Julius von Schlosser, wood-cutting and engraving were, in the 16th century, dominated by Jewish artists, as were book printing and publishing, even though many of their names are lost because only a few signed their work--a rare example is a man called David Laudi, who engraved copper plates in Cremona in 1550, to illustrate a history of the city.

Amsterdam and the Low Countries

Amsterdam had a great number of Jewish copper engravers, of whom Salom Italia is one of the best-known ones. Others include, in the 17th century, Benjamin Senior Godines, who also did calligraphy; B. de Almeyda; Abraham bar Jacob. Engravers in the 18th century, working mostly as book illustrators, were Abraham Lopez de Oliveira, Aaron Sanctroos, and Abraham Isaac Polack. In the 19th century, Moritz Dessauer and Abraham Lion Zeelander were members of the Amsterdam Academy, and Joseph Hartogensis and Jeremias Snoek were responsible for the painting and engraving of the Rotterdam synagogue.

England

No Jewish engravers are mentioned in England until the last half of the 18th century. Known engravers of portraits include Ezekiel Abraham Ezekiel (1757-1806), who made portraits; Solomon Bennet (1761-1838); and Salomon Polak, who also illustrated a Pentateuch, and later Henry Lemon of London (b. 1822).

Germany

The situation in Germany is like that of England, with names of Jewish engravers not known before the end of the 18th century, when Jewish engravers of portraits are named. Portraits of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Catherine the Great were made by I. Schnapper in Offenbach. Others are Johann Michael Siegfried Lowe (1756-1831) of Königsberg, who also painted; a portrait of Hirschel Levin was made in Berlin by M. Abrahamson the younger. Lithographers include Leopold Dick of Kaiserslautern (1817-54); Abraham Neu, known for an engraving of the Worms synagoge (1830); and David Levi Elkan (1808–1865), active in Cologne. Veit Meyer (b. 1818?) and Gustav Wolf (b. 1798) were from Dresden: Julius Bien worked in New York (b. 1826); and Leo Lehmann engraved portraits in Hamburg. A stamp-cutter named Moses was active in Offenbach in 1825.

German engravers

• B. H. Bendix (born ca. 1770), mostly portraits
• The Henschel brothers (1780s-1860s)
• Löser Leo Wolf of Hamburg (1755-1840), views and portraits
• Friedrich Fränkel (b. 1832), Nuremberg
• Georg Goldberg (b. 1830), Nuremberg
• Heinrich Redlich (d. 1884)
• Louis Jacoby (1828-1918, Berlin
• Hermann Seligman Emden (1815-75), Frankfurt am Main

Portraits of rabbis

One such need in the Netherlands of the 17th and 18th centuries was the desire of Dutch rabbis to have their portraits engraved. These rabbis, "the intellectual elite of European Jews", began to participate in the portraiture fashion at the time, and paintings and engravings were done by "artists such as Rembrandt, Luttichuys (1616-73) or Lievens", in addition to lesser-known engravers, some of whom worked exclusively for the Jewish community. Many of those engravers were non-Jewish. Both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews participated in the portraiture tradition, and the portraits were comparable to others of the period. Of Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, an engraved portrait was made in 5453 (AD1693) by Abraham B. Jacob; a central image of the rabbi, pictured with writing utensils, is surrounded by an octagonal frame with Latin inscription, with Fonseca's name at the bottom, in Hebrew. Abraham bar Jacob was also responsible for the prints in an Amsterdam Haggadah and an amulet for new-born babies. Of many of those engravers, however, little is known, nor do they frequently show up in dictionaries of European artists.

Medals and coins

In the Jewish tradition, medals are struck to commemorate historic and religious events, and since the sixteenth century medals also portray people.

Epitaphs

Engraved tombstones provide a wealth of evidence for the distribution of various Jewish European communities, and of aspects of their lives. For instance, Ashkenazi-style epitaphs in Northern Italy prove that this part of the peninsula became a haven for Ashkenazi Jews who were expelled from their home countries; Sefardi-style gravestones and monuments indicate many Spanish Jews fled to Italy. Also, in 19th century Italy Hebrew epitaphs begin appearing with a summary in Italian, a language that then takes over as the Jewish community loses universal knowledge of Hebrew: "the loss of Jewish culture by the Italian communities after the proclamation of Italy as a unified state in 1861, and reflects the climate of secularization and of modernism that characterized that century".

References

Category:Engraving Category:Jewish art