File:Decorated Ketubbah, Livorno, 1698.jpg

This early and exceedingly rare marriage contract from the port city of Livorno is ornamented with a sumptuous array of decorative elements. Above the text, a panoramic view of the walled city of Jerusalem is surrounded by six small medallions illustrating verses from Psalm 128 traditionally sung at Italian weddings. Bordering the text are twenty-four elaborate vignettes. Twelve of these feature emblems, each of which signifies one of the twelve tribes of Israel; each of these emblems is, in turn, coupled with a corresponding zodiac sign. These begin directly above the first word of the text with Aries / Issachar and proceed counter-clockwise. The remaining twelve scenes depict the four Aristotelian elements (Water, Earth, Wind and Fire), as well as the four seasons of the year and the four senses (Taste, Sight, Smell and Hearing). Dr. Shalom Sabar has shown how this multifaceted imagery, incorporating the earliest pairing in Jewish art of the emblems of the twelve tribes with the signs of the zodiac, demonstrates a highly sophisticated view of the world as well as an in-depth knowledge of Jewish sources.

This complex decorative program originated in Venice in the second half of the seventeenth century and can be found on very few of the lavishly decorated ketubbot produced for wealthy Jewish families in the Veneto region. The border design was created through the use of a copperplate engraving that was then richly colored in by hand. Produced during the early period of decorated Italian ketubbot, this rare engraved border is extant in only fifteen copies. The first example of this engraved border is found on a ketubbah inscribed in Mantua in 1663. Eleven other examples of this border were employed for marriages that took place between the years 1663-1707; two further examples have had the original text panels removed and a new Ketubbah text inserted (one in 1788 and the other in 1840) and the final known example was used to inscribe a celebratory Hebrew poem presented to Dr. Isaac Luzzatto, a graduate from the medical school in Padua.