Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, edited by Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg, is devoted to the representation of Jews and Judaism in Christian art, with an emphasis on contemporaneous ecclesiastical anxieties on issues concerned with both Christianity and Judaism. The exceptions are one essay on a Jewish subject created by a Christian and another on the architecture of the Venetian ghetto. The essays are framed by Nirenberg’s introduction and final chapter, “The Judaism of Christian Art,” in which he discusses a major theme of the book: that Christians regard art made for the Church as embodying spiritual truth in contrast with a literal, Jewish materialistic view of the world grounded in the acceptance of religious law. Nirenberg posits that all art criticism, even in the modern period, may be characterized in terms of the dichotomy between these two views of art, with the result that “Judaizing” continues to be applied as a pejorative term to art that is not considered “spiritual.” Kessler’s related essay, “Shaded with Dust: Jewish Eyes on Christian Art,” presents specific medieval works that exemplify recurrent themes in the book: the conflict over imagery within the Church; the supersessionist representation of Jewish figures like David; Christian interpretations of biblical images (e.g., the Brazen Serpent) as a defense of the Christian use of imagery; and the role of Jews as destroyers of Christian art, acts that parallel their role as “killers of Christ” and its equivalent, “desecrators of the host.” The other essays similarly explore relationships between images and texts, texts thought to have inspired particular images or that can be used to explain them.

Judaism and Christian Art is organized according to the traditional periods of Western art history, but represents a selective choice of subjects that begins with Jaś Elsner’s discussion of fourth-century sarcophagi, then leaps to the High Middle Ages (Sara Lipton, Kessler, Francisco Prado-Vilar, Marcia Kupfer, Achim Timmermann, Mitchell Merback), followed by three essays on the art and architecture of the sixteenth century (Dana Katz, Felipe Pereda, Stephen Campbell), one on Nicolas Poussin (mid-seventeenth century, by Richard Neer) and one on Eugène Delacroix (early nineteenth century, by Ralph Ubl).

Elsner’s essay, “’Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded’: Some Reflections on Jewish and Roman Genealogies in Early Christian Art,” typifies the art-historical approach that foregrounds visual analysis, an approach evident as well in the convincing and interesting contributions of Timmerman, Merback, Pereda, and Campbell. In the first chapter on art, Elsner analyzes various representations of the Exodus from Egypt on fourth-century sarcophagi and traces the iconographic elements rooted in Roman art. This approach allows an understanding of the Exodus as a biblical narrative that symbolizes both the Christian triumph over paganism represented by Roman imagery, and Christianity’s descent from Judaism. Elsner ends the essay by tracing its meaning in Christian exegesis. Timmerman’s “Frau Venus, the Eucharist, and the Jews of Landshut” discusses the consequences of redating a particularly anti-Semitic painting on the theme of the Living Cross in St. Martin’s Church, Landshut, to 1452. The new date allows him to relate the fresco to concurrent events in the Jewish community and to the geography of the Jewish quarter, as well as to interpret its position relative to the high altar with its innovative retablo. Merback’s contribution, “Jewish Carnality, Christian Guilt, and Eucharistic Peril in the Rotterdam-Berlin Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament,” is based on an in-depth analysis of the Last Supper that was the centerpiece of the Corpus Christi Altarpiece and its comparison with a scene of the Israelites eating the first Passover meal that occupied the right panel, along with other altarpieces featuring scenes of the Last Supper. He places the work within contemporary Christian anxiety over the possibility that Jews profaned the Eucharist or that Christians received the “body of Christ’ while in an impure state. Pereda, in “Through a Glass Darkly: Paths to Salvation in Spanish Painting at the Outset of the Inquisition,” examines image production in Seville following the establishment of the Inquisition there in 1478, and the impact of a decree requiring every Christian to have images at home. One result was stylistic: the creation of naturalistic figures embedded in the flat surfaces characteristic of earlier sacred images. The decrees also inspired a debate on the validity of images and accusations against Jews and conversos believed to have denigrated images or the host. Similarly, Campbell relates history to imagery and style to polemics in “Renaissance Naturalism and the Jewish Bible: Ferrara, Brescia, Bergamo, 1520–1540.” His subjects are works exemplifying the divine expressed as “facts accessible to human vision,” whose compositions reflect the religious hierarchy of that referenced by the physical forms in the paintings.

Prado-Vilar’s “Iudeus sacer: Life, Law, and Identity in the ‘State of Exception’ Called ‘Marian Miracle’” relies less on text than the other essays. It is an innovative, provocative analysis of the metamorphosis of Jewish representation within the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the illustrated collection of Marian hymns and legends created for Alfonso the Wise (r. 1252–1284). Prado-Vilar does not see portrayals of Jews as reflecting political realities during the king’s reign, but relates changes in Jewish imagery to the use of different models for parts of the book. He interprets the transformation of a Jew’s image within a single page of illustrations as symbolic of conversion to Christianity, as a reflection of the Marian cult, and of the transformation of a Jew into an iudeus sacer, an individual who was cursed by his patrilineal lineage, but became sacred “through his mother/Mary/Christianity.” This new definition of the converted Jew expresses the fluidity of relationships between Judaism and Christianity in medieval Spain.

The only chapter focused on architecture is Katz’s “The Ghetto and the Gaze in Early Modern Venice.” She writes that the establishment of the ghetto in 1516 was a symbol of dominance by the state (placing all Jews within its gaze), at the same time correctly noting that their segregation in an officially sanctioned space allowed Jews to reside within the city. As Dora Liscia Bemporad wrote in 1989, the paucity of Judaica in the pre-ghetto period and the many donations of valuable ceremonial art to synagogues after its establishment signify a new sense of security on the part of Jews (“Jewish Ceremonial Art in the Era of the City States and the Ghettos,” in Vivian B. Mann, ed., Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, 111). Katz places great significance on the height and irregularity of ghetto buildings in contrast to the regularity and harmony of other Venetian architecture, which is a somewhat invalid comparison since building in the ghetto was haphazard, and the result of overcrowding. The stress on the confining nature of the ghetto is also exaggerated to a certain degree, since there were no barriers between Jews and Christians during daylight hours and times when both Jews and Christians visited each other’s domains at night.

Other essays in Judaism and Christian Art rely largely on texts, both within works or as independent accounts, to interpret works of art. Lipton’s “Unfeigned Witness: Jews, Matter, and Vision in Twelfth-Century Christian Art” begins with a short discussion of the emergence ca. 1080 of specific visual symbols to signify Jewish figures in works of Christian art, but then proceeds to a text-based rationale for the creation of sumptuous three-dimensional works for the Church such as the Eilbertus Portable Altar dated ca. 1130–50. The altar is an odd choice for discussion since the prophets depicted on it illustrate an older representational tradition of generalized figures that rely on inscribed banderoles for identification. One yearns for a discussion of the artistic sources underlying these figures. Another essay, Neer’s “Poussin’s Useless Treasures,” focuses on texts within the painter’s two versions of Penance—the first painted 1636–40 and the second in 1647—and interprets them according to seventeenth-century perspectives on the Hebrew Bible: one that viewed it as a prefiguration of Christian truth, and the other that read the Old Testament without referring to its Jewish context. Neer’s discussion pivots on Poussin’s depiction of Hebrew texts on the headcoverings of the Pharisee and another Jew (barely visible in the reproduction) in the first Penance and their replacement with an emblem of vision in the second version, which symbolizes the blindness of a Judaism fixated on law in contrast with the spirituality of Christianity. The final portion of the essay contrasts Poussin’s use of Hebrew text in the first Penance with its more superficial use in paintings by other artists and with its incorporation into Poussin’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery of 1643. Once again, the reader has difficulty connecting the discussion to the painting, this time because a key word has been cropped from the detail.

In “Abraham Circumcises Himself: A Scene at the Endgame of Jewish Utility to Christian Art,” Kupfer discusses a miniature in the Alba Bible of 1433, which was a new Castilian translation from the Hebrew original with 324 miniatures. (There are many interesting and unique features of the Bible that cannot be discussed here.) Kupfer establishes her interpretation of the circumcision scene in contrast to that previously articulated by Sonia Fellous (Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel. Quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les chrétiens, Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2001). Kupfer’s commentary depends, in part, on her reading of both the droplets emanating from Abraham’s grotesquely large penis and the red patch below his right hand as blood. These “two bloods” inspire an extensive discussion of their symbolism in medieval texts that, Kupfer maintains, inspired the miniature. The large “pool . . . of blood” that stained Abraham’s garment is nothing of the sort, however; it is the contrasting red lining of his ochre tunic, and is marked by a wavy line that likewise appears in the upturned cloak of an Israelite circumcised by Joshua. In both miniatures, the cloth was turned back to allow circumcision. Contrasting linings, for example, appear in ten of the selected miniatures published by Fellous, but blood is always depicted as droplets.

Another misunderstanding occurs in Ubl’s “Eugène Delacroix’s Jewish Wedding and the Medium of Painting.” His analysis of the work is, in part, dependent on the “absence” of the bride from the painting. He also notes an absence of preparatory sketches, while at the same time citing Cissy Grossman’s 1988 article, “The Real Meaning of Eugène Delacroix’s Noce juive au Maroc” (Journal of Jewish Art 14 (1988): 64–73), whose second illustration is a watercolor of a courtyard that served as a model for the painting—presumably that of Abraham Benchimol’s house in Tangiers where Delacroix stayed. Without any explanation, Grossman identified the bride and groom as the figures descending the stairs at right. An analysis of their costume and the young woman’s jewelry, however, indicates the correctness of her assumption. Extensive gold embroidery is characteristic of wedding costumes worn by Jews of Sephardi descent, as are the bride’s large hoop earrings and pearl diadem. These features of the bride’s costume in The Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1841) match those in Delacroix’s watercolor, Saâda, the Wife of Abraham Benchimol and Précidada, One of Their Daughters (1832), whose wedding is the subject of the painting. Moroccan Jewish wedding festivities lasted days, and while some events took place indoors, what Delacroix depicted—as opposed to what is quoted by Ubl from the painter’s journal concerning the Benchimol wedding—was the moment when the bride and groom are about to become visible presences after yiḥud, the required period of seclusion following the ceremony.

Judaism and Christian Art discusses an art-historical theme, but lacks the normal apparatus of such texts: captions that include the date of a work, its location, and collection number (also absent from the list of illustrations), as well as quality reproductions, with at least some in color, that would allow the reader to follow the writers’ arguments. Other desiderata: references to a full citation in footnotes with abbreviated information afterward, and an index. Despite these shortcomings, this collection of essays presents interesting analyses of many little-known works of art—and of some that are famous. The story told by Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism is by definition focused on art presenting confrontations between Christians and Jews. There is another side to this history that should be mentioned: a lack of anxiety on the part of patrons who allowed Jewish artists to make works for the Church (Vivian B. Mann, ed., Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain, New York: Museum of Biblical Art, 2010, 76–129).