Judging a Book by its Cover

Abstract

Most interpretations of Bernard Picart's encyclopedic Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, published originally in Amsterdam in seven oversized volumes (1723–1737), have stressed the artist's objective portrayal of diverse religions. The opening volume has been the subject of much scholarship, particularly focusing on Picart's even-handed treatment of Judaism, a notable distinction considering the denigration of Jews in both history and art history for centuries. In this article, I aim to nuance previous assessments of Picart as an unbiased portrayer of Jews by paying special attention to his often overlooked, crucial frontispiece, which complicates his larger agenda. This allegorical opening engraving conspicuously diverges from the descriptive, straightforward pictorial language and ethnographic approach found mostly throughout Cérémonies. Closer examination of Picart's summary depiction of religions, in conjunction with ancillary visual sources, demonstrates a more partial attitude and clarifies how the artist played into a common, traditional supersessionist trope: the theological belief that the Christian church offered a fulfilment of Judaism's initial promise and thus supplanted, or nullified, God's original covenant with the Jews when Jesus's divinity was revealed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt amalgamate Abramovitch and Baskind's arguments in a recapitulation of this theme in “Familiarizing Judaism” (2010b, 169–193). The trio also takes the idea of familiarization a step farther when they broadly assert, on more than one occasion, that Picart and author Bernard “valorize Judaism.”

2. I thank Jonathan Israel for directing me to this source and for his helpful comments on this essay.

3. Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt argue that Picart's frontispiece (as well as his larger programme) “represents all religions with something approaching even-handedness” (2010a, 132), an assessment that does not hold up when looking closely at the artist's depiction of Judaism. They repeatedly employ words such as “tolerant,” “authentic,” and “dispassionate” to describe Cérémonies. In another publication, Mijnhardt describes the frontispiece with the same vocabulary; he states verbatim that the frontispiece represents religion “with something approaching evenhandedness.” See Mijnhardt (2010, 27).

4. All translations are from the French edition and are my own.

5. Picart, until late largely forgotten by art history (if he receives attention at all it is from historians), garners some mention in an old article that briefly addresses his influence on Hogarth (Antal 1947). Case in point: in Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt (2009), only 4 out of the 17 contributors, including the editors, are trained art historians (and 2 of the art historians address Impostures innocentes rather than Cérémonies). Aside from my own work on Picart from an art historical point of view—in other words analyses that attempt to discern the meanings of Picart's Cérémonies though iconography with history bolstering such interpretations rather than using the imagery to confirm historical perspectives—see Veldman (2007–08).

6. Although less common, some male Jews wear a kittel when leading a Passover Seder, a cantor wears the garment during certain services, and a bridegroom may don a kittel on his wedding day. Women also often dress in white on the High Holy Days.

7. The general consensus, even if the numbers sometimes vary, is that the Ashkenazim flooded Amsterdam in the later part of the seventeenth century and that they outnumbered the Sephardim.

8. For more on the synagogue and its architectural history, see Vlaardingerbroek (2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samantha Baskind

Samantha Baskind, Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University, is the author of several books, including Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art (2004) and a solely authored encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Jewish American Artists (2007). She also co-authored Jewish Art: A Modern History (2011) with Larry Silver and co-edited, with Ranen Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008). Her newest book, Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America (2014), was funded by a year-long National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship as well as the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. She served as editor for US art for the 22-volume revised edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2006) and is currently series editor of “Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination,” published by the Pennsylvania State University Press.