Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Esther Before Ahasuerus
Frans Francken II (Flemish, 1581–1642)
1622
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 73.5 × 112.8 cm (28 15/16 × 44 7/16 in.); Framed: 95 × 133.7 × 8.9 cm (37 3/8 × 52 5/8 × 3 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- In memory of a young boy who delighted in the story of Esther and of all those he loved and who love him
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This painting depicts a scene from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Esther, the story behind the Jewish holiday of Purim. Queen Esther kneels before her husband, the Persian King Ahasuerus, requesting an audience. Over the course of two dinners, she reveals her own Jewish identity and the plot of the king’s advisor to annihilate her people, which is ultimately thwarted. The Hebrew Bible often served as a source for early modern Northern painters; here, Frans Francken II cleverly emphasized this heroine’s multiple virtues. He highlighted her bravery by showing her reaching out to grasp the king’s scepter as well as her eloquence and cunning, symbolized by the parrot and statue of the hybrid Greek god Hermathena.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
