Obj. ID: 37620  Chamishah Chumshei Torah, Venice, 1755

This text was prepared by William Gross:

This section of the printed Bible is bound in a nice gold tooled leather binding and carries an elaborate printers mark. There is a frontispiece before the title page with a full page etching from the hand of an artist named Griselini. It would appear that he was not Jewish, but worked with Hebrew printers in Venice. We have from him illustrations in several Hebrew books, an engraved Esther Megillah and a Succah decorative plaque. This is the frontispiece of a Mahzor, showing the Akedah with Yitzhak in a sitting position, an image whose source is in Christian iconography. It is also the central image in one of the full page illustrations in this large Tanach printed in Venice in 1739.
The Bragadin press was established in Venice in 1550 by Alvise Bragadin. This press continued as one of Venice’s leading Hebrew print-shops, issuing Hebrew titles in the 18th C under several generations of Bragadins (the last of whom was Alvise III). In the last decades of the The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book, when this book was published, only the family name, Bragadin, or Nella Stamparia Bragadina appears on the title pages. Throughout the years, the output of the Bragadini press was considerable, and covered the gamut of Hebrew works. The press was somewhat unusual, however, in that the Bragadins themselves did not always take an active role in their printing-house, leaving its operation to other printers, and lending their name to other presses.
FOA