Esther at the Palace Gate

Around 1475 a Florentine family married off a daughter, and to furnish the bridal chamber they ordered a pair of painted chests. The story chosen for them was the Book of Esther — a young woman summoned to a Persian king's palace, who becomes queen and then saves her people. This panel shows Esther at the gate, kept at a distance by the architecture around her, a wall between her and the man she needs to reach. The design came from Botticelli's workshop, and much of the actual painting is now given to his young pupil Filippino Lippi. Which hand did which figure is still argued over. It is one of the few Botticelli-circle paintings to have ended up outside Europe, in Ottawa.