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Joel ben Simeon [Feibush Ashkenazi]
( fl 15th century). Jewish scribe and illuminator, active in Germany and northern Italy. Although more of his work has been identified than any other medieval Jewish artist–copyist’s, all that is known about him is culled from colophons in manuscripts that he either wrote or decorated. He lived in Cologne and Bonn; most of the manuscripts attributed to him are liturgical texts, especially Haggadot (see HAGGADAH). He usually named himself as the scribe of a manuscript, as in the following works: First Nuremberg Haggadah (Jerusalem, Schocken Lib., MS. 24086); First New York Haggadah (New York, Jew. Theol. Semin. America Lib., MS. Mic. 4481); a prayerbook dated 1449 (Parma, Bib. Palatina, MS. 3144); a prayerbook dated 1452/3 (Turin, Bib. N. U., MS. A. III. 14); a Haggadah (Cologne, Fond. Martin Bodmer, MS. Cod. Bodmer 81); a prayerbook dated 1469 (London, BL, MS. Add. 26957); the Washington Haggadah, dated 1478 (Washington, DC, Lib. Congr., Hebr. MS. I); and David Kimhi’s commentary on the Psalms dated 1485 (Parma, Bib. Palatina, MS. 2841). In two works Joel ben Simeon referred to himself as the artist: the Ashkenazi Haggadah (London, BL, MS. Add. 14762) and six leaves of Tabernacle implements (untraced); while in one manuscript, the Second New York Haggadah (New York, Jew. Theol. Semin. America Lib., MS. Mic. 8279), he described himself as the scribe and decorator. His illustrations were usually emphatically outlined drawings filled in with colour. As the approximately 20 manuscripts attributed to him are somewhat inconsistent in style, it has been assumed that he headed a workshop.
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