Observations on the Creation Cycle of the Sarajevo Haggadah

Abstract

Haggadah of Sarajevo' (Figs. I & 2). Closer attention to individual details of the Sarajevo miniatures does indeed reveal not only a strong resemblance between them and, more specifically, certain features of the eleventh-century Greek Octateuch of the Vatican Library, Codex graecus 7473, but also an even stronger relationship to individual features of the ninth-century illustrated version of that sixth-century work known as the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, Codex graecus 6994, also of the Vatican Library. In addition, it will become apparent in the following analysis that other Western European manuscripts preserve some of these same distinctive features and that the Sarajevo Haggadah may provide some unique insights relevant to the kinds of models available to artists in northern Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries if not even earlier.