«La visione degli arredi del santuario»

The representation of the sanctuary implements has been central to Jewish visual imagination since the biblical description of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) revealed to Moses at Sinai. It offers a privileged field for analysis through the method of “symbolic philology” developed by Giulio Busi. This article examines a selection of illuminations and micrographic compositions from late medieval Sephardic Bibles (thirteenth–fifteenth centuries), tracing iconographic variants within the manuscript tradition. After outlining the origins and transmission of the motif of the vessels from antiquity through the Middle Ages, the study turns to the earliest dated Sephardic examples - the Toledo Bible of 1277 (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Parm. 2668) and the Perpignan Bible of 1299 (Paris, BnF, hébr. 7) - and compares them with images in fourteenth-century Sephardic biblical manuscripts now preserved in Modena (Biblioteca Estense) and Rome (Archivio Storico della Comunità Ebraica di Roma). One section is devoted to illuminations that combine the representation of the vessels with the image of the Mount of Olives, a motif with clear messianic implications. The article concludes by considering shifts in aesthetic conventions in the early modern period, as exemplified by the so-called Imola Bible (fifteenth century). Through comparative visual analysis, the study seeks to decode key aspects of the vessels’ iconography and to illuminate the cultural, historical, and ideological factors underlying their graphic and compositional transformations in Sephardic manuscript production.