ARTIS - Art History Institute

This paper studies Portuguese Hebrew illuminated manuscripts of the late 15th century in terms of form and style. This group of manuscripts is compared with two other Sephardic decorated groups based in Andalusia and Toledo. This comparison permits to conclude that the Portuguese illuminated manuscripts, mainly composed by Bibles and Siddurs, have produced a more balanced synthesis between the aniconic tradition and the artistic developments of the age, namely those transmitted by Italian illuminated books.

The Cervera Bible (BNP IL 72) is unanimously recognized as one of the most sumptuous medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts and a true masterpiece of Sephardic art. It was acquired by the Royal Public Library in 1804, being one of the rare Hebrew manuscripts of which the names of all protagonists are known, namely the patron, the scribe of the consonant text, the scribe-Masorete and the illuminator. The manuscript was made between the Northeast Kingdom of Castile (copy of the text) in Cervera del Río Alhama, and the Kingdom of Navarra (Massorah and decoration), a region that had a rich activity of Hebrew manuscripts production in the towns of Tudela and Soria. In this paper we analyse the manuscript from a codicological, historical and art-historical perspectives. It stresses the analysis of the function and meaning of the grammatical treaties and the high technical quality of the illuminations. It interprets also the reason for its strong intercultural decorative program, combining the art of Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews, as well as Islamic and Mudéjar art with the French and Iberian Gothic art.

En la Baja Andalucía, entre 1468 y 1482, fueron producidos varios manuscritos hebraicos que presentan decoración semejante, marcada, esencialmente por un aniconismo acentuado, por la ausencia del color, y por el uso de patrones decorativos en forma de micrografía de carácter "islámico" o "mudéjar", en una clara recuperación de esquemas decorativos de los manuscritos hebraicos del siglo XIII copiados en Toledo. Partiendo del estudio concreto de uno de esos manuscritos, la Biblia hebraica conocida como Biblia de Abravanel, conservada en la Universidade de Coimbra, se analiza la idiosincrasia decorativa de la "Escuela Andaluza" como una señal de resistencia sefardita, sea en relación al mundo cristiano (que dictará la expulsión de los judíos de Sevilla y Córdoba en 1483), sea en relación al crecimiento de las tendencias asquenazíes y cabalísticas en la Península.