Paintings that appear in All Things...

If you are reading All Things That Deserve To Perish, you might like to have a look at three paintings that figure prominently in the book's narrative.

Though not all the women represented in these paintings are supposed to be Jewish, each picture seems to portray a Jewish female cultural archetype.   Jewish female cultural archetypes went beyond the classic feminine archetypes of virgin, mother, and whore.  Indeed, European society nurtured a complex and contradictory mythos regarding the  “Jewess.”  While often admired for her intellectual and artistic accomplishments, she was also portrayed in art and literature as a temptress, even a predatory female. And we must not forget that concurrently she was worshipped as the incarnation of sexual purity and holiness — as the Mother of God.