Bidspirit auction | Portrait of Rabbi Yosef Yeshurun,

Portrait of Rabbi Yosef Yeshurun, Chazzan of the Sephardic Community in Amsterdam – Lithograph – circa 1850–1860 * “Portrait of the honorable Yosef Yeshurun de Oliveyra, chazzan of the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, ” wearing a distinctive three-cornered hat. At the bottom of the portrait there is a short poem by the renowned Amsterdam poet Avraham Delaville, together with a printed facsimile of his signature: “There is no voice and no sound — only an image before your eyes;  Yet hasten to the place of prayer,  A place of trembling and also of joy;  The grace of his lips and the sweetness of his voice shall awaken your heart.” The sheet is a lithographic print, a special printing technique employing a stone cylinder, which enables far greater precision and depth in the image than the earlier woodcut method previously in use. Lithography also made possible the production of colored prints. Extremely rare. Not recorded by Alfred Rubens in his work A Jewish Iconography (London, 1981). A wonderful remnant of the rich cultural world of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. Rabbi Yosef Yeshurun de Oliveyra , one of the distinguished members of the Amsterdam community in the nineteenth century, was appointed chazzan in 1847. In the Rosenthaliana Library in Amsterdam, a poem composed in honor of his appointment by the poet Yosef Eibeschitz (Fuks Catalog no. 380) survives. In that poem, Eibeschitz refers to the chazzan as a “father of orphans, ” due to his extensive involvement in raising and caring for orphans (perhaps through the longstanding “Gidul Yetomim” society, for which Avraham Delaville printed a poem in 1836 entitled Mizmor Shir Chanukas HaBayis ). He passed away in or near 1860. Avraham ben Daniel Delaville was a noted scholar and poet in Amsterdam. He composed many poems, among them works honoring the kings of Holland, a poem in honor of Sir Moses Montefiore following the Damascus Affair, and an elegy upon the passing of Rabbi Shmuel Bernstein, the Ashkenazic rabbi of Amsterdam. He served as a teacher in the rabbinical beis medrash of Amsterdam and as a member of the scholarly society To’elet. He passed away in 1877 at the age of seventy. Circa mid-nineteenth century. Printed lithographic portrait (stone print). At the margins of the portrait appear the printer’s details: Mayer & Comp. Size: Approx. 18.5×24 cm. Mounted at the margins on the reverse onto special paper measuring approx. 27.5×34 cm. Housed in a passe-partout for preservation and display. A copy of this portrait was recorded in the past in a public auction held in Amsterdam in 1891 (Boekveilingcatalogus, 2–5 November 1891, p. 55, no. 1286).