Throughout the Middle Ages, from the third to the fifteenth century, Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East decorated their holy texts, liturgical spaces, and sacred objects with images.
Despite the problematization of images introduced by the second commandment, Jewish artists and patrons drew from the Biblical text to create complex iconographies aimed to intensify the experience of the believer and glorify and holy text. Yet these communities did not operate in a cultural vacuum; they were influenced by, and in dialogue with, their surroundings.
Noam will offer a few case studies of the art produced by Medieval Jewish communities, and its dialogue with their Roman-Pagan, Christian, and Muslim ruling cultures. These artistic dialogues proved to be a fruitful mechanism for artistic production as Jewish art at times absorbs, rejects, or manipulates prevalent artistic trends.
In this lecture we will consider these cultural interactions through the lends of visual art, trace artistic continuity and change across time and space, and contemplate what are some key features that characterize the art produced by Jewish artists and communities in the Middle Ages.
Noam Yadin-Evron is an art historian, educator, and writer. She holds a PhD in medieval art history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the role of material culture in shaping individual and communal identity in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. She was part of the research group Liturgy and the Arts in the Middle Ages, in the Mandel Scholion research center for the Humanities, and her PhD considers the use of material culture in creating Christian attitudes towards money and wealth.
