Img. ID: 225004
Fol. 20v: A beardless young man is enticed by a woman in an open landscape with trees on either side of the scene. She is slightly lifting her long magenta dress while he, wearing a short tunic looks down shyly.
This depiction does not illustrate the caption above, but another moment in the story. The caption reads: “Image of the woman encouraged by her lover and ‘leaning upon her beloved’ (Song of Songs 8:5;
צורת האשה בחשוקה מתחזקת ועל דודה מתרפקת; Loewe 2004, I:171).
For depictions of the same subject in the other 15th-century manuscripts of Meshal ha-Kadmoni
see Appendix 1: line 24.
Our depiction has no erotic allusions, there is not even eye-contact between the couple and they are standing at a distance from each other. In contrast, in two other copies of the book (Oxford1 and Oxford2), the couple is embracing. A possible model for our manuscript could be the conversation between the merchant and the house-keeper in Der Edelstein ofAugsburg, 1447 (fig. 1; Loewe 2004, I:171; Gronemann 2006, I:198, 223-225).
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Fig. 1: Ulrich Boner, Augsburg, 1447. Heidelberg, Univ.Bibl. cpg.314, fol. 38 (Gronemann 2006, II:fig. 42) |
For the Rothschild Miscellany, see IJA 1982/1/109.