(Line Engraving 7⅜ × 5.)[¹]
p. 44.
[¹] Manasseh’s portrait had been etched by his friend Rembrandt ★ in 1636, the copper plate being-subsequently converted into a mezzotint ★; but this engraving by Salom de Mordecai Italia, taken at the age of thirty-eight, was his favourite portrait. It was this likeness he sent to Abraham von Franckenberg, the Silesian mystic, as a token of his friendship. (Bonum Nuncium Israeli [P. FELGENHAWER] ... Amsterodami ... 1655. p. 92.)
At the upper left corner of the engraving is a small vignette of a pilgrim with staff and water wallet, and at the corner opposite is a lighted candle in a metal holder on a shelf, alongside an open volume inscribed [♦]נר דברך לרגלי (Psalm cxix., 105). A similar design to the vignette was used as the printer’s mark of several volumes from Manasseh’s press with the motto “Apercebido Como Hv Romeiro.”
In the Hermitage at St. Petersburg a painting of an old Rabbi by Rembrandt (1645) is suggested to be a portrait of Manasseh, but this is extremely doubtful.
Of Salom Italia very little indeed is known. The only other portrait he engraved was that of Haham Jacob Judah Aryeh de Leon, who in 1641 completed a model of Solomon’s Temple. In 1885 J. L. Joachimsthal sold by auction at Amsterdam a מגילה dated 1665, written and embellished with forty pen-and-ink drawings, signed
יצרתיו אף עשיתיו שלום בכמר מרדכי מאיטאליאה זל פה אמשטירדם ט׳ לחדש אדר התך לפק
[♦] The actual verse says: נר לרגלי דברך
★BICHENO, James.
(1751–1831.)