Engraver, etcher, and draftsman Shalom Italia was, as his name indicates, from Italy, where his family worked in the Mantua printing industry. However, probably attracted by the opportunities in the growing metropolis, he made his way to Amsterdam by 1641. Among Shalom Italia’s works are illustrated ketubot (marriage contracts), book illustrations, and portraits of the community’s leading figures, such as Menasseh Ben Israel, who was the founder of Amsterdam’s first Hebrew printing press and an advocate for the readmission of Jews to England.
This ketubah was written and illustrated for the wedding of Isaac Pereira and Rachel de Pinto, members of prominent Sephardic families. At the top a pair of hands clasp, and vignettes along the sides…
In the back of a manuscript collection of astronomical texts, which includes one of Abraham ibn Ezra’s works on the use of the astrolabe (a tool for astronomical calculations), is a set of crude but…
This Persian carpet, manufactured between 1600 and 1630, was later used for a reader’s desk and desk cover in the Portuguese Synagogue in The Hague, Netherlands.