To Mid-Seventeenth-Century Arks

revivals of ancient art in the design of arks 165

CHAPTER SEVEN

REVIVALS OF ANCIENT ART IN THE DESIGN OF LATE-SIXTEENTH- TO MID-SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ARKS

Following the general principles of Renaissance design of Torah arks in the synagogues of Kazimierz near Cracow, the designers of the arks in Pińczów and Szydłów introduced into the east European synagogues new forms of the arks’ top: a classical pediment and a high, obelisk-like pediment. Com- mon in the decoration of the Kazimierz arks, the vegetative relief in the pediment was interpreted in Szydłów to be a seven-petaled plant reminis- cent of the seven-branched candelabrum in the Sanctuary. Later in the seventeenth century, representations of the menorah appeared in synagogues in Kazimierz and spread elsewhere in east European synagogues. The revivals brought to synagogues the visual signs of three ancient cul- tures: Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and biblical Jewish.

The Triangular Pediment

The all’antica triangular pediment surmounts the Torah ark in the synagogue of Pińczów (Plate 5.12). This stone ark was damaged during the Nazi occupation of the town; it was later removed, and has recently been re- stored and re-attached to the wall.1 The triangular pediment of nearly equi- lateral shape was found on medieval Torah arks, including that in the Altneuschul in Prague (Fig. 33).2 The Renaissance arks in Kazimierz had non-framed vegetative pediments of a triangular shape, which diverged from their predecessor, the enclosed triangular pediment raised on the attic panel atop the Torah ark of the Scuola Tedesca in Padua (Fig. 35). In distinction, the pediment of the Pińczów ark designed as a simple low triangle enclosed by classical cornices and resting directly on the entablature gives the whole ark the appearance of a classical aedicula.

1 Julian Słoń, “Projekt fundamentowania oraz przytwierdzenia do ściany, szafy ołtarzowej Aron Kodesz w sali głównej synagogi w Pińczowie,” typescript (Kielce, 1996); the report was kindly made available to me by the Regional Museum in Pińczów; Tambor and Znojek, Społeczeństwo żydowskie w Pińczowie. 2 Cf. Paulus, Die Architektur der Synagoge im Mittelalter, 538–41. 166 chapter seven The association of columnar niches surmounted by a pediment with a sanctuary is traced back to Greco-Roman architecture, where they served as shrines for a sacral or sepulchral image or object, and their Latin definition, the aedicula (literally, “small temple”), was derived from aedis, temple.3 Material and visual evidence that have been uncovered in the modern period show that the aedicula was a main form of the Torah ark in the ancient synagogues,4 but those artifacts might have been unknown in medieval and Renaissance Europe. The classical aedicula was revived in synagogues ca. 1522/23, when a columned marble frame bearing a classical entablature and triangular pediment was built at the Scuola Catalana in Rome (Fig. 22).5 The form was imported from the ecclesiastic art of the Italian Renaissance, where the all’antica aediculae—called there also tab- ernacoli, after the biblical Tabernacle—were used as shrines or frames of sacred images.6 For example, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s wooden tabernacle produced for the Florentine Arte de’ Linaiuoli (ca. 1433) frames Fra Angelico’s painting of Mary with Child (Fig. 74),7 and Jacopo Sansovino’s marble tabernacle, the Martelli Altar (built from 1518 to 1521) in Sant Agostino of Rome (Fig. 76), encloses a sculpture of the same figures.8 The tabernacle was also a name for a receptacle, stationary or portable, for liturgical ves- sels housing the consecrated Host, of which an example is Luca della Rob- bia’s tabernacle of 1443 (Fig. 75).9 The transposition of the name for the biblical portable sanctuary onto the church aediculae alludes to the typo- logical parallel of these objects and Christ in his human body or, symboli-

3 See a brief review and bibliography in G. Bendinelli, “Edicola,” Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale, vol. 3 (Rome, 1958), 214–16. 4 Revel-Neher, L’arche d’alliance, 249–50; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, 2000), 330–31. 5 Migliau, “Nuove prospettive,” 191–205; Daniela Di Castro, “Gli arredi” in Arte ebraica a Roma e nel Lazio (Rome 1994), 115; idem, “Prìncipi e vendori di stracci: arte nel ghetto del Roma” in Italia ebraica: Oltre duemila anni di incontro tra la cultura italiana e l’ebraismo (Tel Aviv 2007), 175–77. 6 Cf. the usage of tabernaculum in the Vulgate (e.g., Ex. 39:32; Num. 16:26–27; 31:54). 7 Michelangelo Gualandi, Memorie originali riguardanti le Belle Arti, vol. 4 (Bologna 1845), 109–11. 8 A tabernacolo is the definition for the Martelli altar in Sansovino’s contract for this work. See Gino Corti, “Iacopo Sanovino’s Contract for the Madonna in Sant’Agostino, Rome,” The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 396. 9 The tabernacle, now at Peretola, was produced for the Chapel of San Luca in the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence. On this, Anna Padoa Rizzo, “Luca della Robbia e Verrocchio. Un nuovo documento e una nuova interpretazione iconografica del tabernacolo di Peretola,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 38, no. 1 (1994): 48–68.