Ahasuerus Chooses Esther

This long, narrow panel was never meant to hang on a wall. It was the painted front of a cassone, a marriage chest, the kind of luxury furniture a wealthy Florentine family commissioned when a daughter married around 1480. The young Filippino Lippi painted it as part of a set telling the Old Testament story of Esther, working alongside his former master Sandro Botticelli. In the foreground a line of young women files past King Ahasuerus, who picks Esther from among them to be his queen, a fitting subject for furniture heading into a household with a new bride. Behind them, in miniature, the same story's feasts play out. The shape that looks so odd for a picture made perfect sense as the side of a chest built to hold a trousseau.