Portrait of Dr. Fernando Mendes
Among Catherine da Costa’s surviving paintings is the full-length portrait of her father, Dr. Fernando Mendes (1647–1724). Mendes was a prominent Jewish physician, who attended both King Charles II and his wife, Catherine of Braganza. He and his family were Portuguese crypto-Jews. He was brought to England by Queen Catherine from Portugal when she married into the English royal family.
Credits
With permission of the Trustees of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community of London, photo by Smilynne Joukovski.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.
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Related Guide
Early Modern Visual and Material Culture
1500–1750
Early modern Jewish visual culture flourished, with illuminated manuscripts, ornate synagogues, and portraiture alongside increasing non-Jewish interest in Jewish customs and greater Jewish self-representation.
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Portrait of Aaron Hart (Uri Feivel)
This portrait depicts the first chief rabbi of Great Britain, Aaron Uri Feivel Hart (1670–1756). Hart was born in Breslau and followed his merchant brother to England. His only published work, the…
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Three representatives of the Prague Burial Society in the 1730s are pictured in these portraits: Jonas Jeitteles (1735–1806, the community’s official physician), Rabbi Leib Fayvel Dayan (another…
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In the 1730s, the German Jewish Franks-Levy family commissioned an artist to create portraits of three generations of the family. These paintings are all attributed to Gerardus Duykinck, a member of a…