Patronage Unknown, Artist Anonymous: Internal Evidence for Knowledgable Jewish Constellations of Authorship in the 14th Century

Author: 
Marc M. Epstein, Vassar College

Some of the most interesting, mysterious, and beautiful of the fourteenth-century illuminated haggadot texts of the home service for Passover Eve are of ambiguous provenance. Stylistically, they can be linked to particular places and times, but absent colophons or directions in the manuscripts themselves, we remain unilluminated, so to speak, regarding the identity and the level of religious knowledge and imagination on the part of the patrons, their advisors and the artists of these important works. Apparent "errors" in sequence or disposition of the iconography have led some scholars to assume that non-Jewish artists created these works under the very loose direction of Jewish patrons mostly concerned with receiving lavish and beautiful books. This paper will reassess some examples of internal iconographic evidence, demonstrating that it is specifically when iconography appears "erroneous" to the post-medieval eye that it merits most careful examination. I hope to reveal how, in many cases, rather than being confused copying from allegedly more "perfect" models now lost, these apparent "errors" are deliberate emplacements and configurations of iconography which demonstrate strong religious affiliation, knowledge and imagination on the part of the authorship of these manuscripts