Barcelona Haggadah

Folio 35

The Four Sons. ‘The simple one, what does he say? …’ The Simple Son is seen asking a question and stands before a seated, bearded man to the left of the initial Hebrew word for ‘the simple one’. In this quiet vignette, the boy is shown gesturing ‘simply’, with his left palm downward. The foliate border does not continue along the top of the page and in the upper-left-hand corner is a hybrid figure with a human head, long reptilian neck, wings and hooves, and in the lower border two helmets surmount long-necked animal heads. The final figure in the sequence, the ‘one who does not know how to ask’, appears with another person in the initial word panel on fol. 35b. The boy’s mouth is open, his arms extended and his palms out in a receptive manner. The figure to the right raises his hands instructively, perhaps representing the recommendation in the passage to ‘broach the subject to him’. The words mean literally ‘you open it for him’, and here, graphically, both his arms and mouth have been ‘opened up’. The two figures appear to grimace, mainly because the artist of this manuscript tended to depict people in profile. The decorative margin employs some of the vertical, architectonic forms found on previous pages, but the acorn motif no longer appears.
Leaf size is approximately 255 x 190mm (10 x 7.5in)