Obj. ID: 1289
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts  Austrian Siddur, Austria, 1375-1400

The present manuscript is a siddur of the Ashkenazi rite for the entire year. It includes the Passover Haggadah and the Ethics of the Fathers. It was not completed, since part of the Hosha'anot and the service for Shemini Azeret are missing. Its main text was copied by one main scribe (Scribe 1) until fol. 90v, while from fol. 91 onward four additional hands copied the text, though using similar codicological features (parchment, ruling, pricking). Effaced or missing text by Scribe 1 were completed by Scribe 6 (see: Script).  At the end of the manuscript, two folios were added in a later period: fol. 119v contains part of the Kapparot service in semi-cursive Ashkenazi script, while fol. 120 is a fragment of a Torah reading: Isaiah 35: 7-10, written in different Ashkenazi scripts. They were possibly added as fly-leaves in the restoration of the binding, after 1471, as indicated in the inscription on the front cover of the binding (see: Binding).

The manuscript was decorated only in the original part copied by the main Scribe 1 (fols. 5-90v), while from fol. 83v onwards it is not decorated.

The decoration program consists of many red pen-work initial word panels or initial letters placed at the beginning of the text column for many of the main sections of the prayer. The style of the pen-work decoration of the initial letters and words recalls that of the filigree initial word panels rendered by one of the artists in the Sefer Mordecai held in Budapest (Budapest, Szèchènyi Nationalbibliotheck, Cod. Hebr. 1, commentary to the Talmud by Mordecai ben Hillel ha-Cohen). This manuscript was copied for R. Israel ben Aaron in the year 1373/74 (see: colophon on fol. 337), and the style of its decoration, which is more elaborate and varied than the Vienna Siddur, is attributed by Fingernagel to a workshop of manuscript illumination active in Vienna in the 1370’s (see: Fingernagel, “Neue Zeugen des Niederösterreichischen Randleistenstils”). The artist of the Vienna Siddur is the same as the one who painted some of the less accurate panels of the Budapest manuscript (see: for example fol. 191v and 199; Fingernagel, figs. 4-5, p. 30). He is identified mostly for dog’s heads (e.g. fols. 6v, 55v) and human faces in profile (e.g. fols. 5v, 37), and the round ending of the flourishes in the margins, sometimes filled with human faces in three-quarters (e.g. fol. 21, 53). These elements are typical of this artist, and appear also in the Budapest manuscript (e.g. fols. 52v, 122v, 157, 191v, 199) and in Latin manuscripts decorated in the same workshop and probably by the same hand, such as a manuscript held in Vienna, Universitätsbibliothek (Fingernagel: what is the content of this manuscript?, ms. III 506, fol. 186r), executed in Klosternburg around 1375.

Other Hebrew Illuminated manuscripts can be attributed to the same workshop, which are also characterized by same typical masks and human faces, even though they were not executed by the same hand. One is an undated copy of "Decisions by Asher ben Yehiel" held in Oxford (Bodleian Library, ms Reggio 3), whose secondary initial word panels are decorated with pen-work ornaments sometimes decorated with profile masks attached to the sides of the panel, or with flourishes that form loops enclosing sketchy faces, very similar to those in the Vienna manuscript. Another manuscript decorated with the same motifs is “Kizzur Piskei ha-Rosh” by Jacob ben Asher (Vatican, BAV, Ebr. 449), which bears a divorce contract dated 1391 and indicatingVienna as place. Also in this manuscript the secondary initial word panels are decorated with filigree pen-work animated by very similar masks and dog's heads so typical of this school, and its similarity to the Vienna manuscript leads us to the conclusion that they were produced in the same workshop (compare e.g. the masks on fols. 38v and 81 of the Vatican manuscript with those e.g. on fols. 37, 53 of the Vienna manuscript; the dog's heads e.g. on fols. 9v, 38v, 81 of the Vatican manuscript with those e.g. fols. 6v, 55v of the Vienna Siddur; and again the loop-shaped faces on fol. 38v of the Vatican manuscript with that e.g. fol. 53 of the Vienna).

This manuscript, even though mutilated and not very well preserved, is a precious testimony of the production of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in Southern Austria, by an artist that was trained in a workshop that also produced German and Latin manuscripts in the last quarter of the 14th century.