Every image we create is a mirror that reflects a way of seeing. We look at the world and at others in relation to ourselves, through our own mentality and attitude.

Using a broad selection of works, this exhibition recreates a medieval mirror that shows how Jews and conversos (converts to Christianity) were portrayed by Christians in Spain from 1285 to 1492. Images played a key role in the complex relationship between all three groups during this period. On the one hand, they were an important vehicle for the transmission of rites and artistic models between Christians and Jews and provided a space for collaboration between artists from both communities. On the other—the grim flipside—they helped spread the growing anti-Judaism embedded in Christian society. In this respect, the visual stigmatisation of the Jews was a faithful reflection of the Christians’ mirror, of their beliefs and anxieties, and accordingly a powerful means of asserting their identity.

Following the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity resulting from the pogroms of 1391, cult images became the centrepiece of the controversy. They were taken as evidence for confirming New Christians’ sincerity or, on the contrary, for accusing them of Judaising. The spread of these unfounded suspicions of Judaising heresy lay at the root of the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. Aware of the power of images, the new institution used them intensively, either to design powerful settings or to define methods for visually identifying conversos.

The images featured in this exhibition remind us that while differences exist, the idea of otherness is a construct.

Christians and Jews inhabited a shared space with permeable religious boundaries. Despite the differences between the two communities, Jewish artists produced works for Christians and Christian masters executed pieces for Jews. Transfers and exchanges were often encouraged by the patrons themselves. In a display of acculturation, the Jewish elite commissioned illuminated manuscripts—notably haggadot—similar in format and type to Christian codices. For their part, some Christian painters and patrons drew on their intimate knowledge of Jewish customs and rituals to devise portraits of various kinds: from positive depictions of traditional environments and practices to scenes designed from a clearly polemical perspective. The images show that for Christians no religious adversary was more familiar—and therefore more difficult to ignore—than the Jews.

The gold chain tied to Zacharias’ leg is held by another priest, charged with taking his body out of the Holy of Holies, if he died during the sacred ritual. The curious detail reveals that Christians’ knowledge of Jewish customs was so considerable that it made the depiction possible of an esoteric tradition inspired on the Zohar, the foundational book of the Kabbalah. The images taken from the Jewish world that we find in Christian art reflect situations of intimacy and exchange between the two communities.

The Gothic architecture of the temple, the high priest dressed in episcopal attire and the presence of an altar transform the circumcision of Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem into a Catholic liturgical ceremony. This is how one of the basic Jewish rituals — the surgical removal of the foreskin — is reinterpreted with the aim of stripping them of the original significance and giving them a new Christian reading. The images highlight that, for Christians, no religious adversary was more familiar and, for that reason, more difficult to ignore than the Jews.

According to the Christian concept of Salvation History, the so-called Old and New Testaments are inextricably linked. That is why prominent Jewish kings and prophets were common subjects of Christian iconography, where they were represented as prefigurations of the New Law. In contrast to this positive view, from the 13th century onwards Christian theologians developed a distinctly belligerent attitude of negatively stressing the Jews’ inability to accept Jesus’ divine nature. Images, like texts, echoed this controversy through the explicit metaphor of the Jews’ blindness, a theme that was widely disseminated and reproduced in all kinds of works and media. Although many authorities continued to argue that it was possible for the Jews to convert to Christianity, the visual recreation of this blindness paved the way for constructing their alterity. Through their denial of the Messiah, the Jews began to become the Other.

The use of segregating and negative visual traits to evoke the blindness of the Jews upon not recognizing the Messiah helped to accentuate their stigmatization. A paradigmatic example is the personification of the synagogue as a blind, decrepit old woman, with the standard torn. The yellow of the banner and the dress is a negative sign: from the 13th century, this colour was related to lies and betrayal. Hence its association with Judas and, with an obvious desire to slander, with Judaism and the synagogue.

A varied anti-Jewish iconography began to develop in the late 13th century in a context of systemic violence against the Jews. It ranges from portraits based on caricatures and distinguishing signs (clothing and round badges) to scenes portraying the Jews as enemies of the Christian faith. As in the rest of Western Europe, besides expressing intolerance and prejudice, these degrading images often stemmed from strategies for asserting the Christian identity. We need only look at the scenes showing acts of desecration of cult images and the host, or at the Passion cycles. From a Christian viewpoint, many of these representations were regarded as an effective means of ratifying beliefs that had sparked heated controversy within the Church—for example, the cult of images and of the Eucharist— or of spreading Christocentric devotions. The distorted image of the Jews as desecrators and deicides was a reflection returned by the Christian mirror—an expression of the beliefs, fears and anxieties of the faithful of the Roman Catholic Church.

From the 13th century numerous libels were spread that accused the Jews of profaning the host. Aside from the particular details of each incrimination, they all have one thing in common: the Jews beat a consecrated host that miraculously starts bleeding. Depictions of bleeding hosts were an effective means for spreading such a complex and controversial theological concept as the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host of the Mass. The terrible flip side was the growing stigmatization of the Jewish people.

From the 13th century many images of the Jews reproduce a stereotype determined by exaggerated facial features, like the nose and the disproportionate eyes or the untidy beard. This iconographical recourse is based on ideas from the ancient world that equated physical diversity with the exotic and the monstrous. The truth is that the somatic distortions are interpreted as an expression of moral inferiority, and produce strange individuals, inferior, dangerous even. In short, the paradigm of the “other” is constructed with them.

The histrionic gestures, the segregating attire and the distorted and vociferous faces characterize the Jews who are demanding Christ’s execution. With the accentuation of the Jews’ evil, the aim was to increase the feeling of commiseration and grief of the Christian faithful with regard to the suffering of Christ.

Following the pogroms that devastated many of the Jewish quarters on the Iberian Peninsula in 1391, large numbers of Jews were forced to embrace Christianity. Far from putting an end to the tensions, the mass conversions fuelled unease that Christianity was now under threat from Judaism from within. Accusations of Judaising caused fears and anxieties to be redirected towards New Christians—that is, conversos and their descendants. In this situation, unique in Europe, images were an active and powerful means of expressing a wide range of desires and concerns. On the one hand, Christians in favour of evangelisation used them to stress the need for all those who remained faithful to the Law of Moses to convert. On the other hand, the growing climate of mistrust prompted many conversos to commission religious images to allay suspicions of Judaising. In both cases, images were at the centre of the controversy.

Saint Vincent Ferrer preaches Christianity with a panel painted with the last judgement of a group in which there are some Jews wearing exotic pointed hats. This group is also the audience of Saint John the Baptist, who is depicted making the gesture of preaching with his fingers. The forced conversions after 1391 ran parallel to an intense policy of evangelization of the groups of Jews that would remain in the peninsula.

The pressure exerted on conversos — Christians descended from Jews — and the increasingly habitual accusations of Judaizing meant that religious images became absolute certificates of Christian identity. This radically traditional icon conceived by Antoniazzo Romano served to express the deep-seated nature of the converso Juan López’s Christian faith, and thus, to keep the suspicions of Judaization that he suffered at bay.

This Orthodox Christ of Piety (chalice, wounds) presents some features that underline its Jewish origin. One is the inscription in Hebrew. Another more surprising one is the evocation of his human condition through an explicit depiction of the sexual organ; we can also see that it is circumcised. Few conversos continued to hold beliefs pertaining to Judaism. Another thing is that in some images a Christian view with Jewish emanations was preserved.

During the 15th century animosity towards conversos grew and eventually led to the establishment of the Inquisition (1478). Specific to the kingdoms of Spain, this institution was founded to persecute new Christians suspected of Judaising. Religious suspicions were joined in 1449—the date the first statutes on purity of blood were enacted in Toledo—by racial prejudice: the idea that conversos were corrupt because their blood was impure. Religious images once again played a prominent role in this atmosphere of persecution and suspicion. Accusations of their desecration became one of the most common arguments levelled against people prosecuted for Judaising heresy. Images were also the means of designing rhetorical programmes justifying and glorifying the Inquisition’s repressive agenda. Lastly, the creation of an iconography that stigmatised Judaising conversos paved the way for a new and shameful visual otherness. This intense production process reached its peak around 1492, when the expulsion of the Jews was decreed.

The effigy of Saint Dominic presents two unusual features in his iconography: the inscription “enquisidor” on the halo and the act of wounding a fox, a metaphor for heretics. With these two details, Berruguete, inspired by Torquemada, transformed the saint into a symbol of the Spanish Inquisition, charged with fighting against alleged false conversos or crypto-Jews.

Sanbenitos were signs that the Inquisition ordered to be hung perennially in churches with the names, the sentences and the punishments of the conversos condemned to autos-da-fé. This is the origin of the expression “te han colgado un sambenito”. Featuring a wolf’s head with its mouth open, spitting fire — a symbol of heresy — this sanbenito belongs to master Juan, a surgeon, burned at the stake in 1490 accused of being a “Judaizing apostate heretic”.

The image presents a monstrous hybrid with a donkey’s body, a horse’s face, a man’s eyes, a greyhound’s ears, a snake’s tail and a mixture of feet of different beings (man, horse, lion and eagle). From the perspective of the old Christians, bodily hybridity was a metaphor of the Judaizing nature of the converso. We are looking at an icon of converso perfidy and of his impure blood. Written to libel conversos, this anonymous pamphlet was very popular in Castile from the late 15th century onwards.

The gold chain tied to Zacharias’ leg is held by another priest, charged with taking his body out of the Holy of Holies, if he died during the sacred ritual. The curious detail reveals that Christians’ knowledge of Jewish customs was so considerable that it made the depiction possible of an esoteric tradition inspired on the Zohar, the foundational book of the Kabbalah. The images taken from the Jewish world that we find in Christian art reflect situations of intimacy and exchange between the two communities.

The Gothic architecture of the temple, the high priest dressed in episcopal attire and the presence of an altar transform the circumcision of Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem into a Catholic liturgical ceremonyThis is how one of the basic Jewish rituals — the surgical removal of the foreskin — is reinterpreted with the aim of stripping them of the original significance and giving them a new Christian reading. The images highlight that, for Christians, no religious adversary was more familiar and, for that reason, more difficult to ignore than the Jews.

The use of segregating and negative visual traits to evoke the blindness of the Jews upon not recognizing the Messiah helped to accentuate their stigmatization. A paradigmatic example is the personification of the synagogue as a blind, decrepit old woman, with the standard torn. The yellow of the banner and the dress is a negative sign: from the 13th century, this colour was related to lies and betrayal. Hence its association with Judas and, with an obvious desire to slander, with Judaism and the synagogue.

From the 13th century numerous libels were spread that accused the Jews of profaning the host. Aside from the particular details of each incrimination, they all have one thing in common: the Jews beat a consecrated host that miraculously starts bleeding. Depictions of bleeding hosts were an effective means for spreading such a complex and controversial theological concept as the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host of the Mass. The terrible flip side was the growing stigmatization of the Jewish people.

From the 13th century many images of the Jews reproduce a stereotype determined by exaggerated facial features, like the nose and the disproportionate eyes or the untidy beard. This iconographical recourse is based on ideas from the ancient world that equated physical diversity with the exotic and the monstrous. The truth is that the somatic distortions are interpreted as an expression of moral inferiority, and produce strange individuals, inferior, dangerous even. In short, the paradigm of the “other” is constructed with them.

The histrionic gestures, the segregating attire and the distorted and vociferous faces characterize the Jews who are demanding Christ’s exaecution. With the accentuation of the Jews’ evil, the aim was to increase the feeling of commiseration and grief of the Christian faithful with regard to the suffering of Christ.

Saint Vincent Ferrer preaches Christianity with a panel painted with the last judgement of a group in which there are some Jews wearing exotic pointed hats. This group is also the audience of Saint John the Baptist, who is depicted making the gesture of preaching with his fingers. The forced conversions after 1391 ran parallel to an intense policy of evangelization of the groups of Jews that would remain in the peninsula.

The pressure exerted on conversos — Christians descended from Jews — and the increasingly habitual accusations of Judaizing meant that religious images became absolute certificates of Christian identity. This radically traditional icon conceived by Antoniazzo Romano served to express the deep-seated nature of the converso Juan López’s Christian faith, and thus, to keep the suspicions of Judaization that he suffered at bay.

This Orthodox Christ of Piety (chalice, wounds) presents some features that underline its Jewish origin. One is the inscription in Hebrew. Another more surprising one is the evocation of his human condition through an explicit depiction of the sexual organ; we can also see that it is circumcised. Few conversos continued to hold beliefs pertaining to Judaism. Another thing is that in some images a Christian view with Jewish emanations was preserved.

The effigy of Saint Dominic presents two unusual features in his iconography: the inscription “enquisidor” on the halo and the act of wounding a fox, a metaphor for heretics. With these two details, Berruguete, inspired by Torquemada, transformed the saint into a symbol of the Spanish Inquisition, charged with fighting against alleged false conversos or crypto-Jews.

Sanbenitos were signs that the Inquisition ordered to be hung perennially in churches with the names, the sentences and the punishments of the conversos condemned to autos-da-fé. This is the origin of the expression “te han colgado un sambenito”. Featuring a wolf’s head with its mouth open, spitting fire — a symbol of heresy — this sanbenito belongs to master Juan, a surgeon, burned at the stake in 1490 accused of being a “Judaizing apostate heretic”.

The image presents a monstrous hybrid with a donkey’s body, a horse’s face, a man’s eyes, a greyhound’s ears, a snake’s tail and a mixture of feet of different beings (man, horse, lion and eagle). From the perspective of the old Christians, bodily hybridity was a metaphor of the Judaizing nature of the converso. We are looking at an icon of converso perfidy and of his impure blood. Written to libel conversos, this anonymous pamphlet was very popular in Castile from the late 15th century onwards.