The Visual Arts

Judaea Capta Coin of Vespasian
71 CE
Gold
7.1 gm
The Jewish Museum
1983-88

Making Connections in Art and Jewish Culture: Explore the collection interactively. This online exhibition includes sixty works from ancient artifacts to contemporary art and television clips, and traces their interconnections. The Jewish Museum, New York.

Photo: This coin was minted by the Romans to commemorate their victory in Jerusalem in 70 CE during which they destroyed the Second Temple. This triumph of paganism over monotheism was particularly significant to the Romans who were losing increasing numbers of upper-class citizens to Judaism and Christianity. One side of the coin features a portrait of Emperor Vespasian and his name in Latin; on the other is the depiction of a mourning Jewess sitting beneath a trophy. The Jewish Musuem, New York.

Problems in Jewish Art: A Simon Wiesenthal Center essay includes a discussion of what is Jewish art, the history of Jewish art before and after emancipation, and descriptions of several Jewish artists.

Painting: Simeon Solomon, King Solomon, 1872 or 1874, Gift of William B. O'Neal. Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art.

Ecclesia and Synagoga: A commentary on the negative portrayal of the Jewish relgion by Christian artists during the Mediaeval Ages by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, Director Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota.

Luther & The Reformation - Effect On The Arts

The Bullis School Social Studies Department provides a Social Studies Resources web page about Martin Luther and the Reformation's impact on the visual arts.

Painting: Albrecht Dürer. The Four Apostles. 1523-26. Oil on panel, each 85 x 30". Pinakothek, Munich.

The Counter-Reformation and Baroque Art

Painting: El Greco. Christ Cleansing the Temple. 1570. Wood, 25 3/4 x 32 3/4". National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Bullis School Social Studies Department provides a Social Studies Resources web page about the impact of the counter-reformation on the visual arts. New access to literature and knowledge through the printing press and scientific discoveries was suppressed throughout the Universal Inquisition and the Index Expurgatorius. The Inquisition was a vast repressive machine that worked through informants and secret courts to meet ideological deviance with humiliation, prison, torture and burning alive. God appeared, not as the Loving Father, but as a terrifying Judge; Christ, not as the Good Shepherd, but as the Great Avenger.

Maurycy Gottlieb, Self-Portrait, 1876 Oil on Cardboard Narodowe W. Kielcach Museum (National Museum in Kielce).

Gottlieb lived only 23 years but tried to bridge the gap between Jewish and Polish national life. He did self-portraits in Polish dress. His most important work is Jews Praying in the Synagogue at Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) (1878), a work that suggests the reverence and melancholia of the day with strong realism. In the painting, the artist placed a self-portrait of himself to the right of the rabbi holding the torah in center. Gottlieb's attempt to assimilate in Poland was met with anti-semitism, leading him to return to the Jewish community.

Samuel Hirszenberg, The Black Banner, 1905,Treasures of the Jewish Museum. Samuel Hirszenberg was a native of Lodz, Poland whose work reflected the realities of Jewish life in Poland.

Ephraim Moses Lilien, The Wailing Wall, ca. 1908-1919, in Jerusalem. The Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been a holy site for Jews since the destruction of the Temple in 70CE and is the last symbol of Jewish independence.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, The Return of the Jewish Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs, 1833-34. This painting illuminates the dilemma of Jewish life—to remain as tolerated, second class, unequal citizens, or to seek equality within European life, citizenship and all of its consequences. The painting can also be viewed as an artistic protest against the repeal of equal rights for the Jews.

Art of the First World War: 100 paintings from International Collections to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

Painting: Otto Dix, Triptychon Der Krieg (War Triptych), 1929-32, tempera on wood, central panel 204 x 204 cm, side panels 204 x 102 cm each, Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden.

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