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…
Saul Tchernichovski (1875–1943) is considered one of the great modern Hebrew poets. His poems are part of the canon of Israeli literature, and his portrait appears on Israeli currency. Pasternak…
Paintings with biblical themes were among the genres for which Solomon J. Solomon was best known and which made him popular with both the public and critics in Victorian England and France. Here, he…