Primera Sinagoga de Toledo, hoy Santa María la Blanca

Primera Sinagoga de Toledo, hoy Santa María la Blanca. 

Louis Julien Jacotet and Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot after Genaro Pérez Villaamil, 1842 

Lithograph 

Often styled by the oxymoron ‘Sinagoga de Santa Maria la Blanca’, this building is reputedly the oldest extant synagogue in Europe and indisputably one of the most iconic expressions of the often fractious co-habitation (convivencia) of the three Abrahamic religions in medieval Spain. It was built at the turn of the thirteenth century, in a Christian kingdom, for a Jewish community, by Muslim workers. 

Unsurprisingly, the mudéjar architecture reflects this rich cultural mix and several features, including the lack of a women’s gallery, suggest that it might once have been a mosque. The floor plan, an irregular quadrilateral, could also mean that it was built on the site of an earlier building, possibly a mosque. As this plate shows, the 24 free-standing octagonal pillars are made of brick and whitewashed plaster and the capitals and friezes above the horseshoe arches are all clearly mudéjar in style. As with the previous church of San Román, the result is an interior which is light and airy in a way that much taller, Gothic churches often are not. 

Following the pogroms of 1391, the building was converted into a Christian church, dedicated to the Virgin in 1411 and given the name ‘Santa María la Blanca’. It was remodelled by Alonso de Covarrubias in the mid sixteenth century, which is when it acquired three small apses in the back wall to serve as chapels. It lay empty during the seventeenth century, was used as a barracks in the eighteenth and a warehouse during the Peninsular War. Villaamil shows that by 1842 it was in a sorry state, but it was declared a national memorial site and restored in 1856 and is currently a museum and tourist attraction. 

Title: Primera Sinagoga de Toledo, hoy Santa María la Blanca | Première Synagogue à Tolède appelée aujourd’hui Santa María la Blanca. 

Author/Artist: Louis Julien Jacotet (1806-1880) and Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot (1810-1866, lithographers) after Genaro Pérez Villaamil (1807-1854, artist).  

Technique and Material: Lithograph on paper. 

Dimensions: 313 x 155 mm (image), 525 x 375 (page). 

Published: Plate 29 from Genaro Pérez Villaamil and Patricio de la Escosura. España artística y monumental. Three volumes. Paris: A Hauser, 1842-50. Volume 1.  

Date: 1842. 

Marks and Inscriptions: lower edge, left: ‘G.P. de Villa-Amil dibujó’ / ‘Paris, chez A Hauser boul des Italiens 11’; centre: title as above; right: ‘Lith par Jacottet et Bayot’ / ‘Imp. Lemercier, Benard  & Cie. à Paris’. 

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.