A "kind of miniature monument”: The Montefiore Testimonial (1842-3) and Anglo-Jewish Imperial Identities
A presentation by UK-based art historian Maddie Hewitson drawing together Victorian art, the Hebrew Bible, and Anglo-Jewish identity in the 19th century.
The Montefiore Testimonial (1842–43). Silver testimonial by Mortimer & Hunt, designed by Sir George Hayter and sculpted by Edward Hodges Baily. Image credit: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
This talk will explore The Montefiore Testimonial, a silver sculpture that commemorates the role Sir Moses Montefiore played to secure the freedom of several Ottoman-Syrian Jews accused of blood libel during the Damascus Affair of 1840. I draw links between the Testimonial’s biblical iconography and Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible to offer insight into the complicated and often contradictory formation of Anglo-Jewish imperial identities in the first half of the nineteenth century. Viewed through a Jewish interpretive lens, images of patriarchs, prophets, and kings fracture and disrupt established notions of unequivocal support for the British empire to further goals of Jewish emancipation and cultural assimilation. As a monumental piece of silver sculpture, the Testimonial challenges and hybridises art historical hierarchies between sculpture and the decorative, silverwork and monument, Jewish object and secular commemoration. This analysis reveals how biblical narratives were essential to Jewish and non-Jewish Victorian definitions of national and imperial identity.
Part of the Art History Seminar Series, convened by Mary Roberts and Nick Croggon, and presented by the Power Institute and the discipline of art history at the University of Sydney.
People
Maddie Hewitson
Dr Maddie Hewitson is an art historian of nineteenth-century Britain and its empire. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham, and a Sir William Dobell Visiting Fellow at Australian National University in Spring 2026. Maddie has published in leading journals including Sculpture Journal, Journal of Victorian Culture, and British Art Studies. Alongside her academic work, she has extensive curatorial experience and in 2023 co-curated the exhibition 'Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. She is currently completing a monograph titled The First Covenant: The Hebrew Bible and Victorian Art and is developing a major exhibition on the Victorian art-worker George Tinworth in collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute.