A Magnificent Wedding Poem Printed on Silk, Livorno:Abraham Isaac Castello and Eliezer Saadon, 1780

Dan Pagis, A Secret Sealed: Hebrew baroque emblem-riddles from Italy and Holland. (In Hebrew) Jerusalem, 1986; Roni Weinstein, Marriage Rituals Italian Style. Leiden Boston: Brill, 2004.

Printed on silk (26 1/2 x 19 in.; 675 x 490 mm). Minor stains, backed on silk.

Celebrating the marriage of Simha, daughter of Ben Shivei Dell'Aquila to Joshua Hai, son of Yedidyah Monselice on Wednesday, 1 Adar Sheni, 5440 [= March 8, 1780].

Italian Jews were caught up in the poetic fervor that swept through Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.  In addition to a proliferation of liturgical poetry, occasional poems were written to commemorate a variety of communal and personal events.  Poems were written to celebrate circumcisions and marriages, or to lament the deaths of prominent personalities. These literary offerings, usually composed in Hebrew and occasionally in Italian, were commissioned by affluent members of the community and were authored by some of the most prominent Jewish writers of the period.

Wedding poems, also known as epithalamia from the Greek word thalamos (lit. nuptial chamber), constituted  the most substantial portion of the Hebrew occasional poetry composed by Italian Jews in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.  Designed primarily as celebratory poems praising the newlyweds and their families, Hebrew epithalamia are characterized by a common structure. An introduction consisting of honorific statements introduces the names of the groom and his father.  Frequently, the bride and her lineage are also noted.  The writer may also express his good wishes to the new couple.  In the central section the author presents the poem itself employing any one of a variety of literary formats; sonnets were extremely fashionable, as were longer poems of multiple stanzas.  The third section usually consists of the author's final salutations and a signature, using either the poet's full name or initials.

This splendid poem, printed on silk, was created for the union of two aristocratic Italian Jewish families.  Whereas numerous wedding poems printed on paper are extant, epithalamia  printed on silk are of the utmost rarity.  This example evokes the vibrant celebratory traditions of Italian Jewish society and the rich literary universe of the Jews in the Early Modern era.