Need help with an art mystery

[Harel13]

Gentle reminder: I did say that my theory is very speculative;

Oh, no...I wasn't really thinking about what you wrote when I posted that. I was more thinking about bringing an example that showed the basis - or some of the basis - of the gate idea being from that verse in Psalms.

 

[Harel13]

So, ... that said, in what city was the page in your image printed?

Munkacs or Munkachevo, currently in Ukraine, but I think it used to be part of Hungary at the time of the printing (about 85 years ago).

 

[Terry Sampson]

an example that showed the basis - or some of the basis - of the gate idea being from that verse in Psalms.

BTW, thanks. That most definitely confirms your initial information and makes it clear..
I should have phrased my speculation as a question.

 

[Harel13]

from Traditional Jewish Papercuts (Traditional Jewish Papercuts: An Inner World of Art and Symbol)

@Terry Sampson in reference to your symmetry sketch and to the gate concept (iron grilles...)

 

[Harel13]

I had an interesting day today. I went to the NLI, and though I didn't find out (yet) who's the mysterious engraver, I saw a lot of other cool engravings.

Here are a couple of interesting ones:

This is what happens when the printer doesn't have money for his own title-page, so he goes and buys one from a gentile printer that has the Roman gods Mars and Minerva on it, writes "Solomon" and "David" on it and hopes no one will notice...

Clearly made by a Christian (other than the name "Hans Jakop Hehnah"): Moses's hair looks like horns and Aaron looks like a Bishop or a Cardinal of sorts.

Why is there a knight on the cover of a Jewish book? And is that snake swallowing that child? Why yes, yes it is. No idea what's the meaning of that snake. I thought, maybe, of that story in which the snake tries to swallow Moses, but he was an adult at the time. Maybe something from mythology...

 

[Terry Sampson]

This is what happens when the printer doesn't have money for his own title-page, so he goes and buys one from a gentile printer that has the Roman gods Mars and Minerva on it, writes "Solomon" and "David" on it and hopes no one will notice...

LOL!!! I watched as the first picture you sent loaded onto my screen. As the artwork, then Hebrew words, surrounded by artwork and more letters, came up, I thought to myself: What the hell? Whoever engraved this must have been a really eclectic Jew, there's some crazy stuff happening there. Then I read your explanation; glad you gave me one. I'd have been mystified forever, if you hadn't.

 

[Terry Sampson]

Moses's hair looks like horns and Aaron looks like a Bishop or a Cardinal of sorts.

Ha! That's not Mose's hair or horns. I'll have to get my "Big Family Bible" to show you. Gimme some time to get some photo shots.
re: Aaron. I must have been asleep. Didn't think of Aaron, till you mentioned him. He's holding a censer and is wearing the breastplate (can't remember the Hebrew name for it)
And I see Abraham wielding one heckuva sword in preparation to sacrifice Isaac. .

 

[Harel13]

breastplate

The Choshen. Obviously it's meant to be Aaron, but the whole styling is very Catholic-clergy-like.

 

[Harel13]

And I see Abraham wielding one heckuva sword in preparation to sacrifice Isaac

And Isaac in classic Christian prayer form, looking like a poor little kid, when in fact, most people agree he was in his 30s at the time.

 

[Terry Sampson]

And Isaac in classic Christian prayer form, looking like a poor little kid

I was surprised to see him praying. I'm accustomed to see him bound and laying on unlit firewood.

Obviously it's meant to be Aaron, but the whole styling is very Catholic-clergy-like.

Very, indeed.

Why is there a knight on the cover of a Jewish book?

And is that a Christian cross on his shield?

And is that snake swallowing that child?

I've done some quick google image searching, looking for "serpent swallowing human" and some variants, but haven't found anything yet. Note the crown on it's head. That is a crown, isn't it? My guess is the snake/serpent is a stand-in for Satan.
There's a Christian behind each of these pages, isn't there?

 

[Harel13]

And is that a Christian cross on his shield?

Yup. But that just means the printer was Christian and the press's symbol had a cross. Here's another example:


This is a Talmud printed in Frankfurt.
Now here's a close-up of the printer's symbol:

Double-headed eagle-thing with a sword in one claw and that cross and ball thing in the other.

 

[Harel13]

Ha! That's not Mose's hair or horns. I'll have to get my "Big Family Bible" to show you. Gimme some time to get some photo shots.

Do tell!

 

[Terry Sampson]

Double-headed eagle-thing with a sword in one claw and that cross and ball thing in the other.

The double-headed eagle-thing is a double-headed eagle and is an old symbol for the concept of "Empire" signifying authority/power to the east and to the west. Double-headed eagle - Wikipedia
The cross and ball thing is the symbol for the Latin phrase: "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" [The cross stands while the world turns".

 

[Terry Sampson]

Do tell!

Nuts! I've misplaced the Bible I wanted to copy the photo from. But here's an example of the kind of Christian portrayal of Moses that I mentioned earlier.

[The Pisgah Sight] God shows Moses the Promised Land. Artist: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Engraver: Unknown.

In the picture above, Moses has two "rays" of light exuding from his head, not horns. Turns out, my research turned up the following information. LOL! At one time, Moses "horns" appear to have been fashionable, so to speak, due to a faulty translation in Latin Vulgate version of Exodus 34:30, according to my source @ Moses in Art

• The horns are due to a mistranslation of the word qaran, "glowed" in Exodus 34:30. The idea is that Moses' face was "radiant" when he came down from Mount Sinai, but the Vulgate understood the Hebrew word as qeren, "sprouted horns," and had the Israelites marveling at cornutam Moysi faciem, "the horned face of Moses" (Berlin 397, Colunga and Turrado 75). For this reason horns became a conventional attribute of Moses in the art and even in medieval drama (Campbell, 579). Indeed, Lydgate's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man devotes over 300 lines to expounding the spiritual significance of Moses' horns and rod (Lydgate, lines 1573-1904).
  
  The horns were never universal, however. They are absent in this statue of Moses from 1170. In the 12th and 13th centuries the conservatively styled mosaics at St. Marks, Venice, ignore Exodus 34:30 altogether. In the basilica's mosaic of the Fall of Manna and Water from the Rock, Moses is without horns and wears the same garments pictured in the San Vitale mosaic at right, with only a short blond beard (Vio, 26f.). And at the approach to the Temptation of Christ mosaic is a portrait of Moses holding a scroll with the replies Christ would give to Satan in the desert and wearing a turban! Molanus in 1570 cited a number medieval exegetes who had recognized that the text meant radiance and not horns, and by the 14th century we start to see a few images that have two sets of light rays emanating from Moses' head (Molanus 527-530, Berlin 272n). The rays are usually placed in the same position and at the same angle as the horns had been. They became the standard after Molanus's strenuous denunciation of the horns (ibid.), as illustrated by the fourth picture at right and this 20th-century window. Even a 19th-century Jewish portrait of Moses has the pair of rays.
  
  Some artists fudged the issue by giving Moses two more or less horn-shaped forelocks (example).

 

[Harel13]

LOL! At one time, Moses "horns" appear to have been fashionable, so to speak, due to a faulty translation in Latin Vulgate

Sometimes I forget that not everyone understands my whole line of thought.
It's well-known in Orthodox Jewish communities that Michaelangelo and subsequent Christian artists mistranslated "rays" as "horns" (being the same word in Hebrew. Which is why I instantly figured those were meant to be horn-shaped hairs.

 

[Terry Sampson]

Sometimes I forget that not everyone understands my whole line of thought.

Not to worry. I learned two things as a consequence of my research: (1) I don't know where the Bible that I was looking for is, and (2) Christian artists have drawn odd pictures of things, including Moses.

 

[Harel13]

Hi. I would very much appreciate some help with some research I'm doing on the following piece from any who have sharper eyes than me or are more knowledgeable on the subject.

Intro:
Meet the "Vilna Shaar", also known as the "Shaar Blatt", the title page of the 3rd edition of the Vilna Shas (full set of Talmud printed by the Romm Family printing company in Vilnius, Lithuania):

This title page is quite famous in the Jewish world because it's been reused for many subsequent editions of the Talmud and many other Jewish books.

It's an engraving, probably made based on Baroque style-architecture (from my amateur, no-nothing point of view ), which was based on the style of many title pages of the era, and in particular, Jewish title pages. The concept of the title page was to be a kind of "gate", inviting the reader to delve into the world of the book, and was based on the verse in Psalms 118 "This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter into it." As such, the Hebrew name of the piece is "Shaar", which means gate. The style was based on the style of European synagogue holy arks of the era (though after having scoured many different synagogue pictures (and even some churches), I think it's more probable that this wasn't based on any particular ark but at best is an amalgam of several or a completely custom design of the engraver (also because there's a bit of an angle issue with the four columns)).

For many years, though, I've been wondering who created it. Having carefully examined several versions of the title page, including a first-printing copy available online, I managed to find what I thought were three inscriptions on the lower-half of the image:

1. View attachment 36991
This appears on the bottom-right step. Cross-checking with other versions and asking an expert by email from The Center For Jewish Art, I'm almost 100% certain that it says "PYS. S. HOLG" - does anyone know to what or to whom it's referring to? Plausible guesses also appreciated.

2.View attachment 36993
This is on the top-left corner of the left base-cube. I thought it may be in Hebrew, but I can't make it out. The same expert told me she thinks it's just line-art that looks like writing, possible just a mistake in the engraving, so it may very well be one. The reasons I think that it may be an inscription is: a. You don't really such possible mistakes anywhere else on the piece - not something so vivid, anyway - this engraver was quite precise in his work. b. Later copies of this title page have erased this inscription. Usually things like this are done to avoid copyright issues (inscription no. 1 was also erased in some editions, but poorly). Thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

3. View attachment 36994
This is on the bottom-left step. I originally thought it was some kind of Russian-book-serial-number (like the ISBN system), but the expert told me that it's a name. She managed to make out most of the last name, which is something along the lines of "Bruchoski" or "Bruchocki", but couldn't make anything else. Here's another version:
View attachment 36992

I will be very thankful if anyone could make heads or tails of this inscription and tell me what it says.

Furthermore, if anyone knows of a probably 19th century (because sometimes older art was reused) engraver with a similar name, or if anyone has any information on the maker of this piece, I'd be very happy to hear.

Well, I still haven't given up on this. I just spoke to a Jewish-art expert in Israel who comes, or her family comes from Vilna. She told me, among other things, that the art style is Venetian Renaissance and not Baroque. Other than that, she was impressed with the signatures I'd noticed, as she'd never noticed them. She didn't know who the maker was, but she knew to tell me that Devorah Romm, one of the heads of the Romm printing house, had sent art experts to Padua, Italy, to examine old Jewish gate pages for inspiration. She also gave me the name of a history professor who's considered an expert on the Romms, so hopefully that will yield more results.

This of course explains why the Vilna gate looks so much like Italian synagogue arks.

 

[Harel13]

The history professor wrote back to me and told me that indeed, the mystery of the creation of the famous Vilna gate-page is still an unsolved mystery. He told me that based on his research, the Padua story is a mistake, probably based on the fact that the Romms sent experts to copy manuscripts in Rome (note: there's a fascinating description of how this was done printed at the end of Tractate Niddah (the last in the Babylonian Talmud). It involved very important Christian contacts, of all people, and the names of those people are printed right there in the text). It's possible that the gate-page is merely a copy from an older text, but to find such a text, they wouldn't have needed to travel as far as Italy; they had such books there in Lithuania.

As I still haven't gotten my hands on a list of Romm workers, I asked him whether such a list exists. Now I'm waiting for his reply.