Just Published

Drawing on the Bible: Biblical Women in Art

Beth K. Haber (New York: Biblio Press, 1995), 127 pp., 38 b&w illus., $14.95

Ever since the printing press was invented in the 15th century, engravers have repeatedly turned to the Bible for inspiration—creating their own prints of biblical scenes and, in the days before photography, making relatively inexpensive black-and-white copies of famous paintings available to a wide audience. In this slim volume, writer and artist Beth Haber explores the treatment of 14 biblical women—from Eve to Esther—in engravings. The selected images range from the early Renaissance work of German artists Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein to prints by the Austrian Zionist Ephraim Moses Lilien, a 20th-century proponent of Art Nouveau. Quotations from the Bible, Haber’s meandering commentaries on the Biblical texts and her more precise descriptions of the images accompany each print.

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