É. Apor (ed.): David Kaufmann Memorial Volume: Papers Presented at the David Kaufmann Memorial Conference, November 29, 1999, Budapest.

ORMOS, István: David Kaufmann and his Collection

ISTVÁN ORMOS use of anecdotes in sermons was meant to rekindle flagging interest in theological dogma among believers, and the margin illustrations in manuscripts are to a considerable extent visual manifestations of themes popularized through fabliaux and exempla.

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1 Gabrielle Sed-Rajna has shown that most of "the marginal figures have been transferred to this manuscript from a model book used also for several contemporary Latin manuscripts from the same area, executed for the local aristocratic family Bar" - an example of close professional relationship between craftsmen of the Jewish and Christian communities.

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2 The popularity of representations of this kind in Christian art in general is attested, for instance, by the fiery diatribe of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) against non-religious monastic ornamentation.

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3 It may be remarked that margin illustrations - including obscene representations - abound in Christian liturgical books while they are rare in secular ones, a strange phenomenon, which Randall is inclined to attribute to an attempt at "provocation by contrast."

134 Not infrequently it is difficult to decipher the exact symbolic meaning of a given illustration; sometimes this is hardly any longer possible in view of the frequent occurrence of more or less abstruse references to contemporary persons and ideas. There can be no doubt, however, that these margin illustrations were often simply the figments of the artists' imaginations, "diversions which relieved the tedium of daily life."

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5 Thus for instance at the bottom of folio 46 of volume 1 of our manuscript, the frontispiece of the Book of Adoration (fig. 6), we can see a scene "from the Roman de Renard: the fox, having stolen a goose (or here a cock), is pursued by a woman brandishing a spindle".

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6 In connection with the obscene scene in the upper margin - a man shooting an arrow at the nude hindquarters of a man bending forward - one cannot help but imagine the illuminator who, tired of his monotonous work, suddenly conceives a prank just like an adolescent, in the same way as his modern-day successor, the composer of entries in an encyclopaedia, tired of carding, inserts an entry on a non-existent painter into the serious work of reference, or the lexicographer suddenly gives vent to the accumulated tension of monotony in one of his entries.

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7 This overtly homosexual scene, which has numerous counterparts in contemporary 13

1 Lilian M. C. RANDALL, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley - Los Angeles 1966. 8. Cf. Idem, Exempla as a Source of Gothic Marginal Illumination = Art Bulletin 39 (1957) 97-107. 13

2 Gabrielle SED-RAJNA, The Illustrations of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah = Journal of Jewish Art 6 (1979) 64-77. See also her contribution to the present volume on pp. 86-87 above. 13

3 Quoted in RANDALL 1966. 31. ""RANDALL 1966. 14. 13

5 Ibid., 18. 13

6 SED-RAJNA 1984. PLATE V. On the Roman de Renard

, see LANSON 1909. 93-103. Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. Zürich 1

965. VI. 450-455. LAFFONT-BOMPIANI, Dictionnaire des oeuvres. Paris 1952-1954. IV. 305-309. 154