Museum Tour « Collection Highlights & Essays « Hebrew Bible
Hebrew BibleZoom Select the image to zoom

Hebrew Bible

1490-1500
Spain
Illuminated manuscript on parchment
28 x 17.8 cm

Although the Hispanic Society possesses few Hebrew manuscripts, it does own one of the most impressive volumes to come from this distinguished cultural tradition in Spain: the Hebrew Bible. The manuscript was written in Spain and from there, while still unfinished, it was taken to Portugal, probably around 1497. Neither the Bible's history nor its whereabouts are known until 1618. In a note on one of the end leaves in the Bible, one Jacob Curiel states that while in Pisa he learned of the Bible and purchased it from its owners, the Rossilho family, natives of Fez in Morocco.

The manuscript contains the entire text of the Hebrew Bible, of which the folio pictured is the last folio of the book of Nehemiah. The copyist transcribed the text in a beautiful square Sephardic script and it is remarkable that he was able to adhere to the law forbidding division of words in a sacred text without having to resort too frequently to line fillers or cramping or dilating of words. In the border illuminations, which show signs of Portuguese influence, the artist offers a remarkable array of fauna and birds, among them an owl and a peacock that dominates the entire scene. A dragon is pictured in the bottom left-hand corner.