the european renaissance and the new world 369
income to feed his gambling habit was that of a musician. He became
maestro di cappella of the musical academy established in the ghetto in
Venice in the 1630s, and he played a role in encouraging the use in syna-
gogue worship of music composed by his friend Salomone de’ Rossi,
who introduced the contrapuntal style of Palestrina into the Jewish lit-
urgy. Leone Modena claimed, in his introduction to de’ Rossi’s settings
of Hebrew texts for the festivals, that they had recreated the music of
the Temple. But the music reflected more obviously the adoption of
aspects of Christian liturgy, much as synagogue architecture imitated
aspects of local style, as in the baroque Spanish synagogue at Venice,
originally built in the mid- sixteenth century but redesigned in the mid-
seventeenth century by the architect of the church of Santa Maria della
Salute, and the Huguenot design of the synagogue in Bevis Marks in the
city of London built by the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community
in 1702.^9
Many Jewish communities in the Christian world also embraced con-
temporary arts and crafts for the enhancement of religious practice in
the home as well as the synagogue. For synagogues the greatest atten-
tion was paid to the finials placed on the top of the rods holding the two
ends of a scroll of the law while the scroll is carried in procession. Such
finials (rimmonim ) were often highly elaborate examples of skilled met-
alwork. The oldest surviving embroidered curtain used by a community
to cover the Torah ark in which the scrolls were housed was made in
Italy in the sixteenth century. The custom of commissioning such bro-
cades for the ark and embroidered wrappings for the scrolls themselves
was widespread, often providing a means for pious women expert in
needlework to express their devotion in a public space but also encour-
aging in some communities the development of artistic embroidery as a
distinctive art form adopted by specialized Jewish male craftsmen.
For rituals in the home Jews considered it a sign of piety, defined as
‘glorification of the religious duty’ (hiddur mitzvah ), to indulge in highly
wrought metal kiddush cups, lamps and spice boxes for celebration of
the Sabbath, and special plates for the Passover Seder. These were usu-
ally but not always designed and made by Jewish craftsmen. For the
images used to illustrate books, now far more widely disseminated than
in the medieval period because of the adoption of printing, Christian
influence is blatant in (for instance) the frequent reuse in Jewish texts of
woodcuts originally created for other purposes. Jews outside Islamic
lands seem to have been unconcerned by representations of the human
figure even in manuscripts produced for religious purposes. Thus it was