Jacques Wiener was the eldest of three brothers who were successful Jewish Flemish medalists and engravers. His innovation was the idea of precisely engraving the exterior and interior of a building on the two sides of a medal, an approach that he employed for notable Belgian churches as well as a series of forty-one medals depicting Europe’s most important buildings. Jewish subjects included the Opening of the Jewish Home for the Aged in The Hague (1841) and the Opening of the Synagogue in Cologne (1861). Wiener also engraved the first Belgian postage stamp, an image of King Leopold I that was the first stamp issued on the European continent.
This medal for St. Stephanskirche in Vienna provides an example of the style innovated by its engraver Jacques Wiener (1815–1899), in which the exterior of a building appears on one side and the…
It is customary for Jews to ritually wash their hands before eating bread. This ewer and basin, from Turkey, were used by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman…
This Haggadah was commissioned by Nathan ben Isaac Oppenheim of Vienna, a member of a prominent family of Court Jews. Its title page features a miniature of the sacrifice of Isaac being prevented by…