The Beginnings and Flourishing of 'Ketubbah' illustrations in Italy: A Study in Popular Imagery and Jewish Patronage during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract

During the 17th and 18th centuries a small group of relatively wealthy Jews, living as a segregated religious minority in the ghettos of Italy, adopted a particular practice of commissioning sumptuously decorated marriage contracts for the wedding ceremonies of their offspring. Drawn on large and costly pieces of parchment, these contracts consisted of the traditional text of the Jewish marriage contract (ketubbah, pl. ketubbot) which was framed by a wealth of colorful decorative and figurative representations. The elaborate decorative programs in these ketubbot closely reflect the artistic tastes of their patrons, their beliefs and customs, their relations with the surrounding Catholic society, their economic standing, and their inner social stratification. Notwithstanding these facts, a thorough art-historical study, taking into account all these components, has never been attempted before.Following an introductory chapter which surveys the historical development of the ketubbah and its decoration in Jewish societies around the world, the second chapter investigates the beginnings of this phenomenon in Italy. It answers questions such as who were the first patrons to commission decorated ketubbot, and where, when, and why they started to do so. The third and fourth chapters are dedicated to the height of the Italian ketubbah illustration. The visual sources, meaning and reasons for popularity of the three most recurrent motifs, viz., the portal imagery, the zodiac cycle, and the allegorical personifications, are analyzed in the third; while the various ways in which symbols of ownership and personal allusions were incorporated into the decorative programs constitute the subject of the fourth. In the concluding chapter, the overall meaning of the illustrated ketubbah and the place which it occupied in the life of contemporary Jews are examined vis-a-vis the reactions of the rabbinical and communal authorities and parallel phenomena in the Catholic society. Underlying this discussion is the conclusion that the richly illustrated contracts served to epitomize the hidden aspirations of the wealthy Jewish families, wishing to imitate the manners and artistic tastes of their Christian noble neighbors while still maintaining the Jewish identity.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1987.School code: 0031