{"id":3850,"date":"2017-02-13T10:39:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T09:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=3850"},"modified":"2017-02-13T10:39:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T09:39:44","slug":"italics-why-was-this-italian-artist-so-interested-in-painting-synagogues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2017\/02\/13\/italics-why-was-this-italian-artist-so-interested-in-painting-synagogues\/","title":{"rendered":"ITALICS Why Was This Italian Artist So Interested in Painting Synagogues?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"italics\"<\/a>By Menachem Wecker*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly 275 years after Alessandro Magnasco\u2019s death, experts still aren\u2019t sure what to make of his work \u2014 particularly four paintings of synagogues.<\/p>\n

Known as il Lissandrino, Magnasco was born 350 years ago Feb. 4th. He wasn\u2019t Jewish, but synagogues were among his most frequent subjects, notes the Cleveland Museum of Art, which owns \u201cInterior of a Synagogue\u201d (c. 1725-35). The museum describes the work as \u201cmystical, dark, and imaginative,\u201d adding that the artist likely viewed Jews as outsiders. \u201cMagnasco\u2019s personal views on Judaism in Italy remain unknown,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n

Some 350 miles west, the Art Institute of Chicago owns Magnasco\u2019s \u201cThe Synagogue\u201d (1725-35). A third Magnasco synagogue resides in Florence\u2019s Uffizi Gallery. Here, a rabbi covers his head with a tallit and officiates from within a circle of candles, which may be a reflection of Magnasco\u2019s lack of experience with synagogue services, though some scholars insist he would have been familiar with the Livorno synagogue.<\/p>\n

In Magnasco\u2019s Uffizi painting, male worshipers occupy the benches on the ground level, and women peer out from screens on a secluded balcony above. There is also, apparently, a painting depicting a \u201cschool of Jews\u201d that Magnasco depicted several days before his death, which some scholars refer to as \u201cSermon of the Hebrews in the Synagogue of Livorno.\u201d Finally, Magnasco appears to have painted a \u201cJewish Funeral\u201d as a companion piece to a \u201cHomage to Pluto.\u201d
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What then does all of this mean? Was the gentile painter enamored with Jews to the extent that he sought to glorify and glamorize synagogue worship in a canon otherwise dominated by church scenes? Or is there, perhaps, something darker going on here?<\/p>\n

Magnasco, whose work appears in collections that include the Getty, National Gallery of Art, the Met, the Hermitage, the Louvre, the Prado, and the Rijksmuseum, enjoys a solid reputation. His \u201cSt. Joseph\u2019s Dream,\u201d for example, sold at Christie\u2019s in 2013 for more than $110,000, well above the $50,-$80,000 lot estimate. But there\u2019s also another body of work.<\/p>\n

Magnasco\u2019s \u201cInterrogations in Jail\u201d at Austria\u2019s Kunsthistorisches Museum, may depict the Inquisition torturing people. That subject appears to also surface in two works at Frankfurt\u2019s St\u00e4del museum: \u201cTorture Scene\u201d and \u201cMethods of Interrogation.\u201d It\u2019s tough to judge artist\u2019s ethical views from the way they handle paint, and many depictions of subjects don\u2019t amount to celebrations of any sort, but there isn\u2019t anything in the works that viewers can cling onto and cite as definitive elements that Magnasco is indicting rather than memorializing the Inquisition\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

In a 1949 catalogue raisonn\u00e9 of Magnasco\u2019s works, Benno Geiger observed, \u201cMagnasco was neither a jesting atheist, nor a Catholic bigot, nor an arid Protestant, but something better, that is to say, having taken up painting, he was above everything else a painter.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if in Magnasco\u2019s depictions of everyone from \u201cthe washerwoman to the saint, from Christ to the rabbi \u2026 a whole world appears lived and concluded,\u201d Geiger writes, \u201call this is not, in my opinion, the fruit of a tendency of some sort, whether political or sectarian, or of some secret lodge to which the painter belonged, but the vibrant and pictorially naive expression \u2026 of whatever he saw before him day after day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince he saw everything, he painted everything,\u201d Geiger said.
\n
\n*This article was published in the Forward on February 10, 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Menachem Wecker* Nearly 275 years after Alessandro Magnasco\u2019s death, experts still aren\u2019t sure what to make of his work \u2014 particularly four paintings of synagogues. Known as il Lissandrino, Magnasco was born 350 years ago Feb. 4th. He wasn\u2019t Jewish, but synagogues were among his most frequent subjects, notes the Cleveland Museum of Art,… leggi <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7613],"tags":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-3850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italian-word-of-the-week"],"yoast_head":"\nITALICS Why Was This Italian Artist So Interested in Painting Synagogues? - Pagine Ebraiche International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2017\/02\/13\/italics-why-was-this-italian-artist-so-interested-in-painting-synagogues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ITALICS Why Was This Italian Artist So Interested in Painting Synagogues? - Pagine Ebraiche International\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Menachem Wecker* Nearly 275 years after Alessandro Magnasco\u2019s death, experts still aren\u2019t sure what to make of his work \u2014 particularly four paintings of synagogues. 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