Renaissance art visually conflated Jews and Muslims into one enemy category

Evidence

But of course this makes sense, given the medieval association of Jews and Muslims, seen in the charges that Muslims were “New Jews,” the images of Jewish Sarrazins, and other examples of co-identification. In Renaissance painting, Jewish and Muslim figures often appear side by side, accompanied by symbols that further confuse the categories of Jew and Muslim. On a wall painting at the San Sacro Benedictine monastery in Subiaco, the flags surrounding the scene of Christ bearing the Cross include flags with Jewish badges and Muslim crescents. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 255

Orientalism is another place where we find Jewish-Muslim relationships expressed. As several scholars have argued, it is an ideology that closely resembles anti-Semitism. During his lifetime, Said suggested that the two share a similar anthropology in European discourse. This position has been taken up to some degree by other scholars. As stated in previous chapters, in the Middle Ages, Jews and Muslims were often equated in the minds of Christians, and this shared identity continues to be expressed in Renaissance paintings of Jews and Muslims wearing turbans, either harassing Christ or executing a saint. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 394

Categorization

• XREF: Builds the reader’s core thesis that the monster figure is a container for enemy categories — the conflation of Jew and Muslim echoes themes in The Frankfurt School reading on anti-Semitic and fascist enemy-construction.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the ‘immodesty panics’ system of identity signaling — here flags/badges mark religious otherness visually.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: which specific Renaissance paintings show turbanned Jews and Muslims tormenting Christ or executing saints — visual primary sources for the manufactured monster.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 255; Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 394