Spinoza before His Judges

The Dutch painter Maurits Leon was born to a distinguished Sephardic family in The Hague. Following his studies there and at the Royal Academy in Antwerp, he settled in Amsterdam, where he became known for his genre paintings and received the Royal Medal in 1861. In the 1860s, his focus shifted to painting Jewish religious services in an Amsterdam synagogue as well as subjects related to the history of Sephardic Jews in Holland. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of all but a few of Leon’s paintings are unknown.