Italian, Faenza, early 16th century

Artcurial Paris, Italika Collection, 15 March 2005, lot 32;

Where acquired. 

G. Gardelli, Italika, Maiolica Italiana del Rinascimento. Saggi e Studi, Faenza, 1999, no. 38, p. 81.

This plate is an example of the collaboration and exchange of ideas between the Jewish erudites and Christian philosophers in Humanistic Renaissance Italy. 

The existence of a Jewish maiolica workshop, the Isacchi active in Faenza in the 1480s, is documented thanks to the archival research by Giuliana Gardelli. A document in the Faenza archive 1484 mentions the son of Guidoni Isach, urzolari cappellae S. Mariae in Broylo (Gardelli, op. cit., 1999, p.80). The idea of the link between this plate and the isacchi workshop is a fascinating hypothesis, to be confirmed by further archival research. 

The Renaissance movement of Humanism promoted a systematic, philological program of study and research of Judaism. The Arcana Hebraica Veritas played a key role in the rebirth of the antiques and the use of Jewish iconography by the artists of the Renaissance. Judaism made its way through the heart of the Renaissance artistic creativity, and can be seen in the work of major artists of the period including Giotto, Beato Angelico, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Raphael, Michelangelo.

Among many centres of northern and central Italy, we can highlight Florence as capital of The Hebraistica Cristiana thanks to the arrival of Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494) making the Medici capital the international centre of research of Judaism. In Venice, an international centre of cosmopolitan syncretism, Aldo Manuzio (1449-1515) together with the Jewish publisher Gershom Soncino, in Venice from 1498 to 1503, launched an ambitious program of publishing books in Greek, Hebrew and Latin and worked on the Intoductio perbrevis ad hebraicam linguam. 

Throughout this process of shared cultural values and intellectual flourishing, the Jewish communities in Sicily also played a crucial role. Due to their close ties with the Islamic world, they spoke Judeo-Arabic. Their knowledge of the Arabic language enabled Jewish Sicilian scholars to provide Renaissance Italy and Europe with open access to Greek philosophical texts, which had been translated into Arabic.