Artemisia Gentileschi - Esther before Ahasuerus 1628-1635
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Esther before Ahasuerus 1628-1635
208x273cm oil/canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
The most famous woman painter of the seventeenth century, Artemisia worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples. This painting, among her most ambitious, recounts the story of the Jewish heroine Esther, who appeared before King Ahasuerus to plead for her people. She, thus, broke court etiquette and risked death. She fainted in the king’s presence, but her request found favor. The story is conceived not as a historical recreation but as a contemporary event. Initially Artemisia included the detail of a black boy restraining a dog—still partly visible beneath the marble pavement, to the left of Ahasuerus’s knee.