Painting and the politics of persecution: Representing the Jew in fifteenth century Mantua

According to modern historical literature, Marquis Francesco II Gonzaga of Mantua (14841519) tolerated and protected his Jewish subjects. Francesco pe rmitted Jewish moneylenders to carry arms to defend themselves from Christi an attack, and absolved the Jews from wearing the compulsory 'Jewish badge. ' This paper explores the politics of tolerance in Quattrocento Mantua thro ugh an analysis of two fifteenth-century Mantuan altarpieces associated wit h Marquis Francesco and the prominent Jewish moneylender Daniele da Norsa: the 1496 Madonna della Vittoria by Andrea Mantegna and the anonymous Madonn a and Child with Saints and Norsa Family (c. 1499). Central to my investiga tion are the ideological implications embedded in the image of the Christia n as dominant and virtuous, and the Jew as dominated and pernicious. By exa mining the subtle ways in which both Mantuan altarpieces diverge from picto rial tradition, I demonstrate how these paintings rhetorically articulated identity and difference within a symbolic language of violence.