Visual Artist Series Presentation by Dr. Karen Blough, Art Historian

[Kimberly Hall-Stone]

[image: Stag Hunt-Blough.jpg]

Dr. Karen Blough, Art Historian and Professor Emerita, will give a
presentation via Zoom on Tuesday, February 17, at 6:00 p.m.  Karen taught
art history at SUNY Plattsburgh between 1999–2022. She specializes in early
medieval manuscript illumination and female patronage in the Middle Ages
and regularly presents her work at several professional conferences
nationally and internationally. Dr. Blough has also served as a peer
reviewer for various journals and publishers for the National Endowment for
the Humanities.

Dr. Blough will present her research titled, “Imagining Jewish Persecution
and Celebrating the Hebrew Community: The Evidence of the First Darmstadt
Haggadah.” The First Darmstadt Haggadah was written and sumptuously
illuminated in Ulm (Germany) around 1430 with two additional miniatures
added in Trent (Italy) in the autumn of 1475. The manuscript’s illustration
cycle includes numerous human and animal motifs that are characteristic of
15th-century south German haggadah illumination. However, three of its four
full-page miniatures are unique in this context, while the fourth
represents a familiar theme, but on an unprecedented scale. Two of the
full-page illustrations were painted around 1430 and depict men and women
interacting with books. Several of the motifs in these miniatures recall
contemporary Christian visual tropes, cleverly subverting them to express
the superiority of Judaism over Christianity. The third full-page
illustration depicts a stag and rabbit hunt, a traditional metaphor for
persecution that appears in many Ashkenazi manuscripts. On the facing
folio, fountain of youth iconography is manipulated so as to depict the
virtuous contemporary Jewish family. Both of these images were introduced
into the volume in 1475. I will demonstrate how all four of these
miniatures reflect Jewish persecution in late medieval Europe, relating
specifically as they do to the personal experiences of the manuscript’s
scribe, Israel ben Meir, in Germany and his grandson, Israel ben Meir
Jaffe, several decades later in Italy.

The Visual Artist Series is made possible by the Student Association.  All
presentations are free and open to the public.

Zoom link:

*Topic: Dr. Karen Blough - Visual Artist Series talk*

*Time: Feb 17, 2026 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)*

*Join Zoom Meeting*

*https://plattsburgh.zoom.us/j/85250028354
<https://plattsburgh.zoom.us/j/85250028354> *


*Meeting ID: 852 5002 8354*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ls.plattsburgh.edu/pipermail/student-digest/attachments/20260215/4c9afa51/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Stag Hunt-Blough.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 38313 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ls.plattsburgh.edu/pipermail/student-digest/attachments/20260215/4c9afa51/attachment.jpg>