Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Description
Late medieval Jewish manuscript illuminators in distant parts of Europe relayed on separate painting traditions, which resulted in a di!erent imaginary and motifs inventory. Nonetheless, in the work of some painters, both physical and stylistic boundaries were crossed, hence traditions were combined. My study case is the scribe and illuminator Joel Ben Simeon, who, in the course of his documented work, was active both in the Rhineland and northern Italy, and embedded influences that he absorbed during his work in Italy into his “German” style. In this process, mostly in Passover-Haggadahs, he relocated zoomorphic motifs – typical to German illuminated manuscripts and usually baring symbolic meanings – in Italian compositions and sceneries. As a result, some of these motifs gained di!erent or enriched allegorical intents. Tracking these changing meanings may not only demonstrate the mechanism of copying and integrating images from di!erent sources, but also how visual culture reflected trends of change, resulting from encounters between di!erent Jewish traditions.