Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Al Hirschfeld was a renowned illustrator and caricaturist. Hirschfeld’s lifelong passion for the performing arts married his distinctive style with the vibrant personalities of New York’s theater scene. He was able to capture the character of his subjects with a simple line drawing. He recorded personalities as illustrious and diverse as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Ernest Hemingway, Jerry Garcia, and Liza Minnelli, among many others, in a career spanning most of the twentieth century. Hirschfeld’s works were featured in several prominent publications including the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone. His portraits of Hollywood stars were also featured in several series of postage stamps in the United States.
Depicted in a relief from Sennacherib’s Palace in Nineveh, these musicians, followed by an Assyrian soldier, hold stringed instruments against their chests, plucking the strings as they walk. Dressed…
This is the frontispiece of a 1661 edition of Synagoga Judaica, a study of the customs and culture of German Jewry by Christian Hebraist, and polemical critic of Judaism, Johannes Buxtorf the Elder…