Ester ante Asuero

Artemisia Gentileschi painted this around 1630, in the years she was working in Venice, and she gave a Bible story the scale and swagger of a stage set. Esther, a Jewish queen, has come uninvited before her husband the Persian king to beg him to call off a massacre of her people, an approach that under court rules could have cost her life. Gentileschi paints the instant she faints from the strain and the king half rises from his throne. If you look closely at the surface you can see she changed her mind as she worked. There are earlier figures buried under the paint that she painted out. The bold, up-to-the-minute costumes are Venetian, the clothes of the wealthy men and women she saw around her rather than anything ancient Persian.