These silver Torah finials are from Corfu and were made between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by an artist whose initials were A.Z. They were used in the Scuola Greca synagogue, which served Corfu’s Romaniote Jewish community. Raised vines, chased (delicately hammered from the front of the metal to refine the design), run the length of these opulently decorated finials.
Disabled from childhood polio, Mizrachi creates sculptures that relate to the physical form of his subjects. His work, as in the Peace Rider, expresses his political position and vision for the future…
In this seventeenth-century map, Jerusalem is depicted as a fairly dense city within a wall, with only a few structures outside. Men in Arab dress stand in small groups conversing with one another in…