On Life’s Deception and Disillusion

Aron De Chavez was a Dutch painter and engraver and the first Jewish artist recorded as working in England after the readmission of the Jews. He is known for his painting Moses and Aaron with the Ten Commandments, created for the Creechurch Lane synagogue in London. He also created illustrations for books, illuminated scrolls of the book of Esther, and produced a portrait of the poet Daniel Levi de Barrios and his family.

A poet and playwright, Daniel Levi (Miguel) de Barrios was considered the greatest poet among Western Sephardic Jews. He was born in Montilla, Andalucía, to a family of New Christians. In the 1650s, he returned to Judaism in Livorno. For some time, however, he lived as a Catholic in Brussels, which was under Spanish rule, and he received the rank of captain in the Spanish army. In 1662, de Barrios settled in Amsterdam but occasionally traveled to Brussels, despite the prohibition imposed by the Sephardic Jewish community. He also became a follower of Shabbetai Tzvi. Some of de Barrios’s books were published in Brussels under the name Miguel Barrios, his Christian name, to the dismay of the syndics of the Amsterdam Jewish community. His poetry was influenced by the Spanish Baroque style. Among his writings are historical works about the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, with attention to its personalities and institutions.