Portrait of Court Jew with Ring

Anton Schoonjans

1702

Portrait painting of man facing viewer in lace collar and holding a ring with right hand.
The identity of the sitter for Portrait of Court Jew with Ring is unknown. It is possible that the man in the picture is Jost Liebmann (also known as Juda Berlin), a Court Jew and jeweler in Berlin. But Liebmann died in January 1702, several months before the artist, Anton Schoonjans, arrived at the palace in Charlottenburg. Another theory is that the subject of the portrait is another Court Jew, Behrend Lehmann, but Lehmann was known as a pious Jew and the man pictured here is clean shaven. Some have suggested that the man was simply an unidentified Jew with “exotic” features that interested the artist. Court Jews were Jews who lent money or provided other goods or services to European royalty in exchange for special privileges.

Credits

Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg / Photographer: Jörg P. Anders.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Anton Schoonjans

1655–1726

Anton Schoonjans was born in Ninove, Flanders (today in Belgium). He apprenticed under Peter Paul Rubens’s student, Erasmus Quellinus II, before moving to Rome in 1675, where he studied Italian Baroque painting and became a member of the Bentveughels, a society of Flemish and Dutch artists. Appointed court painter in 1693 to Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, he later held this position in Denmark, the Netherlands, England, and the German kingdoms. While in Berlin from 1702 to 1703, he decorated the Charlottenburg royal palace and painted the Portrait of Court Jew with Ring, possibly modeled on the recently deceased Court Jew and jeweler, Jost Liebmann (d. 1702).

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