Esther before Ahasuerus by Artemisia Gentileschi, Esther 9:1-19, Bible.Gallery
Artwork Description
Esther before Ahasuerus is a painting by the 17th century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. It shows the biblical heroine Esther going before Ahasuerus to beg him to spare her people. The painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, having been donated to the museum by Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll in 1969. It is one of Gentileschi's lesser known works, but her use of lighting, characterization, and style help in successfully portraying Esther as a biblical heroine as well as the main protagonist of the work.
The painting is not specifically dated and the patron or the commissioner of the painting is still unknown. Scholars of Baroque art and Artemisia Gentileschi hold various opinions over when the painting was created; many believe “Esther before Ahasuerus” was painted during the 1630s, during Artemisia's first Neapolitan period.
Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the only women in the Baroque period who was given the training and ability to become a skilled painter, and became one of the most prominent painters of this era because of this.
Artemisia was the eldest child of artist Orazio Gentileschi and was trained in her father's workshop along with her brothers, showing more talent than any of them.[2] She was trained in the style of Caravaggio, as her father's style took inspiration from his.[2][3] Artemisia's works tend to reflect that training and as such are similar in style to Caravaggio's, but with less focus on dramatic setting and lighting seen in his works and more focus on the people involved and their characterizations. Her paintings are also less idealistic in portraying people and more naturalistic and even a bit mischievous, which can be seen in Esther before Ahasuerus where Esther is painted to look more like a normal woman rather than an idealized one, while Ahasuerus is made to look more comedic than a king would normally be depicted.
Looking closely, one can see what looks like the shadow of a boy near the king's knee. X-rays done by the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed that this was a figure of an African boy restraining a dog that was painted over intentionally, which is thought to be a reference to Veronese's depiction of this same scene, which Gentileschi's painting is similar to. In Veronese's Esther before Ahasuerus, however, the dog is resting by the king and not trying to attack Esther.