Le Festin d'Esther

For much of the 20th century this hung under Rembrandt's name. It is now given to Jan Lievens, who as a teenager shared the small world of Leiden with Rembrandt in the 1620s. The two were so close in age, ambition and manner that later scholars kept confusing their early work, and this large canvas was one of the pictures caught in the mix-up. Lievens painted it around 1625, in his late teens, and it stands as the great achievement of his youth. At the lit centre a pale Queen Esther points across the banquet table at Haman, the royal councillor who has been plotting to destroy the Jews of Persia, naming him to the king in front of the whole feast. The bold reds and the sharp fall of light are a young man showing what he could already do.