Barcelona Haggadah

Folio 46

And our oppression … ‘ the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand, and an outstretched arm … ‘ The Israelites are to be seen processing out of Egypt emerging from a panel containing the word ‘[and the Lord] brought us out’. The last figure is a young boy who stands under the last letter of the initial word, while of the five men in front of him, the first three stand free of the confines of the panel and under an arcade. Their leader holds a standard, which seems originally to have been embellished with gold leaf. The last two men, who have not yet emerged from the panel, bend their left forearms and raise their right hands. The artist employed the left arms to carry the viewer’s attention leftwards to the rest of the illustration, while the right arms, shown similarly in many other Haggadoth, allude to the words in the text taken from Exodus 14, 8, ‘with outstretched arm’, a literal rendering found in many Sephardi Haggadoth.30
A particularly amusing and inventive border decoration appears in the lower-outer corner, where a humanoid figure appears to be held captive within the marginal design. The spikey- and fan-shaped leaves and the long-legged bird are typical of the borders in this section of the manuscript. Verso, the illuminated word panel is ‘held’ by the foliate marginal design.

Leaf size is approximately 255 x 190mm (10 x 7.5in)