The Middle Ages provide us with one of the richest repositories of art in the West. Yet the rise in the production of art made for and by Jews―especially in the form of illuminated manuscripts―is often neglected in general surveys or viewed as a mere emulation of Christian art during this period.

In People of the Image, Marc Michael Epstein demonstrates how medieval Jews transformed their visual art into a vital site of critical commentary. Through bold speculation and radical interpretation, Epstein considers how viewers might have empathized with depicted emotions, how they envisioned the relationship between the monstrous and the human, and how they could effectively perpetrate subversive acts merely by anticipating what might occur next in a given image were it to be set in motion. Examining these artworks and imagining the circumstances of their production and reception, Epstein uncovers otherwise inaccessible social, political, and theological perceptions among Europe’s major medieval minority. He goes on to illuminate the afterlives of medieval Jewish art in its reimaginings by postmodern Jews struggling to establish a conceptual as well as a political space for themselves as a minority in majority Christian society.

Bringing together diverse currents from various fields and bodies of literature, People of the Image reveals how medieval Jews understood themselves, the world, and God. Provocative and engagingly written, the book will appeal to audiences across medieval studies, cultural studies, art history, and Jewish studies.

About the Author

Marc Michael Epstein is Mackie M. Paschall (1899) and Norman Davis Chair in Religion and Visual Culture and Director of Jewish Studies at Vassar College. His book Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink won the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in the arts category. During the 1980s, Epstein was Director of the Hebrew Books and Manuscripts division of Sotheby’s Judaica department, and he continues to serve as a consultant to various libraries, auction houses, museums, and private collectors throughout the world.

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