Pictorial messages in mediaeval illuminated hebrew books: Some methodological considerations

The three-way relationship between patrons, artists, and viewers poses some crucial methodological questions that have been considered repeatedly and intensely in the recent art-historical discourse on illuminated manuscripts. If we are to decipher meanings or explicit messages of images correctly, we ought to attend first to the question of who would have determined these meanings and messages and who would have designed the overall appearance of the images and their specific features. An artistic mind aware of the full potential of the impact the visual has on any given viewer's perception, perhaps Or a patron with a particular theological or political agenda To whom would such messages have been addressed Would the potential addressees only have been erudite viewers or might they have been uneducated individuals as well Art can function as an active message bearer on the one hand or as a more passive reflector of social and cultural circumstances on the other. This paper discusses several test cases and views them in the light of recent methodological considerations in the field. It revisits a few themes that I have discussed on various occasions in the past and attempts to put them into a methodological framework that centers around two core issues: first, the three-way relationship between the patron, the artist (or rather, the illuminator), and the viewer; and second, the hierarchy of the textual and the visual when it comes to integrating works of art in the complex fabric of cultural and social life.