In 1931, the famous publisher Ambroise Vollard commissioned Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall to illustrate the Hebrew Bible, sparking the artist to travel to Palestine to immerse himself in the land and its people. He is quoted as saying his experience was the inspiration of a lifetime. It subtly changed his style based largely upon his early life in the Hasidic quarter of his native city of Vitebsk. Chagall's art is very distinctive, supernatural, and lyrical with floating figures, fantastic beings, and disproportion and disjointed spaces and registers that are both delightful and puzzling. Known best for his paintings, as the prints for his Bible series attest, he was a highly skilled and accomplished printmaker.

Image: Marc Chagall, The Passover Feast (detail; from The Bible Series), 1957, hand-colored etching, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Haggerty, collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University 80.7.96. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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