Thursday, December 3, 2009

A New Illuminated Piece in Honor of Chanukah

With the holiday of Chanukah right around the corner, naturally, when looking for some inspiration from illuminated texts of the past my eye was drawn towards images of the Menorah.  There's a beautiful, very detailed drawing of the Menorah that appears in the King's Bible, written at Solsona (Spain) in 1384. 

The King's Bible belongs to a group of Spanish Bibles known as Mikdashiot (Temples).  The reason these Bibles were called Mikdashiot is because they included artistic drawings of the Temple's utensils.  In the King's Bible three pages are dedicated to the Temple's utensils, each page framed by a a verse from Tanakh.
The verse that frames the piece I replicated is from Numbers 8:4 which states:


This is how the candelabrum was made: of beaten gold, it was of one piece from its base to its flower.  He made the candelabrum in accordance with the form that the Lord showed Moses.
 

This Bible once belonged to a synagogue in Jerusalem and was later taken to Aleppo in Syria.  It is known as the King's Bible because it is the only Hebrew manuscript donated to the British Museum by King George IV in 1823.  The Bible was originally written for Isaac ben Judah of Tolosa.