Esther and Ahasuerus

In 1651 Velázquez was in Venice buying pictures for Philip IV, on the second of his journeys to Italy, and this long strip of canvas was among the things he sent back to Madrid. It runs 203 centimetres across and stands only 59 high, cut to the shape of a wall in a private room rather than an altarpiece. Tintoretto painted it between 1552 and 1555, as one of a set of six Old Testament scenes that also included Susanna and the Elders, Judith and Holofernes, and Moses Saved from the Waters. The biblical drama is kept low. The set is really about costume, court ceremony and the rhythm of a crowded room, with a quick calligraphic touch running through the hair, the folds and the leaves. By 1746 it hung at La Granja de San Ildefonso in the hills above Segovia, in the collection of Isabel de Farnesio.