Iehudah Machabeu

Iehudah Machabeu was the pen name of Louis Nunes Dovale, a scribe and member of the Spanish and Portuguese community in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. Between 1646 and 1654 he lived in Brazil. He was known as an outstanding calligrapher, adept at many different kinds of scripts, which he offered as choices for his clients. During the Eighty Years’ War, he forged Spanish documents for Dutch merchants who wanted to flout the Spanish embargo.