Focus on this artwork and analyze the Content.
The figures in the painting appear solemn, and some appear to be in anguish, particularly the central figure (the artist himself), leaning his head on his hand. The adult men are wearing tallitot (ritual garments often referred to in English as prayer shawls) and kippot (head coverings). There is a Torah scroll in the center of the composition, stained glass windows in the back, and candles on the top left. Women look on from the women's balcony; it has been suggested that one of the women is a depiction of Laura Henschel-Rosenfeld, the artist's fiancée.The artist Maurycy Gottlieb appears in the painting three different times, depicted in different stages of his life. In one self-portrait he is an adult, in another he is a young child, and in the third self-portrait he is depicted as an adolescent. Ezra Mendelsohn writes, "Maurycy himself stands, in a colorful, exotic-looking talith, with head in hand. On the left we have the artist as a small boy, wearing a medallion with his initials written in Hebrew. On the extreme right is a young male figure, perhaps again Maurycy, reading from the prayer book alongside a man who might well be his father. Malinowski assumes that this is the case when he says that the painting presents 'an account of [the artist's] whole life'."
It has been suggested that the artist placed his fiancée Laura among the female worshippers, at the right of the column whispering to another woman (perhaps her mother), and to the left of the column, holding a prayerbook in hand. In the painting, many of the figures are people that are close to Gottlieb or people he knew at the time. As said by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Maurycy Gottlieb created this work of art at the young age of 22 years old; a year later, Gottlieb was dead.
kippot Maurycy Gottlieb Tel Aviv Museum of Art Ezra Mendelsohn tallitot talith Laura Henschel-Rosenfeld prayerbook Torah scroll women's balcony Tel Aviv