Obj. ID: 23166
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts  Vienna ‘Ein Ya’akov, Venice, First half of the 16th c. ?

This manuscript is a very early copy of ‘Ein Ya’akov, a compilation of rabbinical interpretations to the Bible (aggadot) from the Babylonian Talmud, and partly from the Jerusalem Talmud, by Jacob ben Solomon Ibn Habib (Zamora, ca. 1441 – Saloniki, 1515/16). The quotes from the Talmud are accompanied by commentaries by Rashi, tosafot, Nahmanides, Nissim Gerondi, Hasdai Crescas and others. The author edited the main work in the last years of the author's life, in Saloniki, and his son, Levi Ibn Habib (1483-1545) accomplished it after Jacob Habib's death. The order of the tractates in theVienna manuscript reflects probably the original work, while in later printed editions it was arranged according to the order of the tractates of the Talmud.

The quotes from the Talmud and the collection of the commentaries to each passage are usually identified in the manuscript by a different arrangement of the text lines: the Talmudic text is written in longer lines than that the commentary. Sometimes, additional commentary is copied in the margins of the page by the same scribe of the main text.

The manuscript lacks a colophon or other indications of place and date of production. Its codicological features can indicate both toItalyand Byzantine areas, while the cursive script is clearly Italian.

The same scribe of the Vienna‘Ein Ya’akov copied also a miscellany of philosophical and halahic texts, housed inMilan (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. X 157 sup.). Both manuscripts share also the same decoration program consisting of woven interlaces forming square and rectangular frames decorating the end and the beginning of almost each new section or textual unit. The motifs consist of braids and simple geometric patterns rendered in a spare-ground technique using the same brown ink of the script, although the frames in theMilan codex are well preserved comparing to those of theVienna manuscript.

This is a more simplify version of the “bianchi girari”, usually made of curling white stems motif, that began to spread in Italy since the middle of the 15th century in Italy, especially Florence. The motifs were common in Italy in the last quarter of the 15th century also in book bindings, such as in that of Cod. Commissioni,996 in Venice, Museo Correr, dated 1489 (See: De Marinis, 1955, tab. VII, comparison #2), or of ms. lat. X,330 in Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, dated 1499 (See: De Marinis, 1955, table X, comparison # 3), as well as in early print decorations, such as ms. CVP 111 of the ONB, Vienna (Ferrara, 1465-1472, see: Matthias Corvinus, cat. No. 22, fig. 3, comparison #4).

The detailed portrait of a bearded man’s head drawn in pen and ink on fol. 49v of the Milan manuscript (comparison # 1) is considered by Mortara-Ottolenghi to be related to Venetian style of the early 16th century (see: Luzzatto-Mortara Ottolenghi, Hebraica Ambrosiana, No. 22).

In conclusion, theViennamanuscript might have been made inItaly, much probably in theVenicearea, shortly after the publication of the first printing in Saloniki in 1516, during the first half of the 16th century.