Engraver, etcher, and draftsman Shalom Italia was, as his name indicates, from Italy, where his family worked in the Mantua printing industry. However, probably attracted by the opportunities in the growing metropolis, he made his way to Amsterdam by 1641. Among Shalom Italia’s works are illustrated ketubot (marriage contracts), book illustrations, and portraits of the community’s leading figures, such as Menasseh Ben Israel, who was the founder of Amsterdam’s first Hebrew printing press and an advocate for the readmission of Jews to England.
This is one of three known portraits of Jacob Judah Leon Templo, who was famous for his elaborate wooden model of the Temple of Solomon, which he turned into a traveling exhibition and showed and…
On the south it is separated from the synagogue of the Polish and German Jews by a branch of the River Amstel; on the west it faces the opulent Casa de los lázaros [hospice for the poor]; on the north…
This eleven-foot-wide painting is of the Bal Bullier dance hall in Paris. It is painted in the style of Simultanisme, a type of painting developed by Sonia Delaunay and her husband Robert Delaunay in…