PICART, BERNARD°

PICART, BERNARD° (1673–1733), French artist and engraver. Picart settled in Amsterdam in 1710, partly to escape the restrictions to which, as a Protestant, he was subjected in Catholic France. He earned a place in the history of Jewish art by his realistic portrayal of Jewish religious rites. These constitute an invaluable record of Dutch Jewry in the early 18th century. Unlike Rembrandt and his circle, who were chiefly interested in the facial expressions of individuals, Picart sought out Jews in the synagogue and in their homes in order to acquaint himself with their ceremonies. In his picture of a Passover   celebration the artist himself can be seen, hatless, participating in the meal. Picart used his sketches, the originals of which are in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, to make etchings with which he illustrated the section devoted to Jews in the first volume of an 11-volume work, Cérémonies et Coûtumes Réligieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde (Amsterdam, 1723). The engravings were often reproduced in various editions, and served as the basis for a series of imitations published by F. Novelli in Venice in 1789. Picart also engraved the title pages for some Hebrew works, such as the Amsterdam Pentateuch of 1725. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Rubens, A Jewish Iconography (1954), 6, 14–22. (Alfred Werner)