Images drawn from the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the “Old Testament”) were among the most popular subjects for Christian illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages. This exhibition brings manuscripts that explore the medieval Christian understanding of Hebrew scripture into dialogue with the Rothschild Pentateuch, a masterpiece of the Jewish manuscript tradition. Together, these objects from different religious traditions demonstrate how the Hebrew Bible was a living document, its contents subject to interpretation dependent on time and place.
The exhibition is curated by Larisa Grollemond and includes several of objects from northern Europe, including a drawing of Judith by Maerten van Heemskerck and The Last Judgment, from a book of hours made in Flanders (possibly Brabant), after 1460.
Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), Judith, 1560
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles