Bezalel artists mapped biblical figures onto images of oriental Jews

Evidence

For the most part, it was only some Jewish artists who chose to portray Jesus visually as part of rather than in contrast to his Semitic people (and they did not always encode his Jewishness as oriental). In 1873 Mark Antokolsky, the Russian sculptor, provocatively represented Jesus as a traditional east European Jew. Maurycy Gottlieb (1856–79) created a number of canvases where the crucified Jesus’ shroud is a Jewish prayer shawl, the tallith. He may have inspired the much more famous Marc Chagall, whose White Crucifixion (1938) uses the same visual device to make a similar point against an Aryanism that was, in Nazi Germany, already beginning to reach its logical conclusion. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 210 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bezalel invented an imagined local oriental artistic tradition to legitimate itself.; Bezalel’s philanthropy expected oriental Jews to perform Palestine’s biblical image in return.; Bezalel art depicted oriental Jews as types rather than individuals (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Jewish artists reclaimed Jesus as Jewish in visual response to Aryanist art #complicates (0.74) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 210