Simeon Solomon’s The Moon and Sleep was inspired by the Greek story of Endymion, a beautiful youth beloved of Selene, the goddess of the moon. Zeus granted Endymion ageless immortality, subjecting…
Calvary was not the first time Marc Chagall portrayed the crucifixion in a painting, and it would not be the last. Chagall saw the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as a symbol of Jewish suffering. In this…
Baghdad-born Suleiman (Saliman) Menaḥem Mani (1850–1924) held many important posts in Ottoman Palestine, including chief rabbi of Hebron. He was also a Hebrew poet and fiction writer and the author of…
Simeon Solomon attended the Royal Academy in London at age fifteen and was the youngest artist whose work was ever shown there. Early in his career, he painted Old Testament and Jewish religious subjects. Inspired by the Italian Renaissance, Solomon increasingly turned to religious mystical subjects and classical pagan themes painted in a pre-Raphaelite style. Much of Solomon’s work was homoerotic, and in 1871 his prose poem on the theme of same-sex male love, “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep,” was attacked. His arrest and conviction for gross indecency in 1873 destroyed Solomon’s career and led to years of social condemnation, alcoholism, and poverty.
Simeon Solomon’s The Moon and Sleep was inspired by the Greek story of Endymion, a beautiful youth beloved of Selene, the goddess of the moon. Zeus granted Endymion ageless immortality, subjecting…
Calvary was not the first time Marc Chagall portrayed the crucifixion in a painting, and it would not be the last. Chagall saw the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as a symbol of Jewish suffering. In this…
Baghdad-born Suleiman (Saliman) Menaḥem Mani (1850–1924) held many important posts in Ottoman Palestine, including chief rabbi of Hebron. He was also a Hebrew poet and fiction writer and the author of…