The Punishment of the Eunuchs

Two of King Ahasuerus's chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, plotted to kill him. Mordecai, Esther's cousin, learned of it, Esther warned the king in his name, and the two men were hanged. In the Book of Esther the whole episode takes three verses, and here it fills a picture of its own, if a very small one. Veronese painted it while still in Verona, on a canvas small enough to be set into a piece of furniture, which the museum thinks is probably what it was for. He worked fast, with the freedom of an oil sketch, and the museum points to the loose handling of the landscape and to the contrasts of complementary colours set side by side.