Esther before Ahasuerus
Jan Adriaensz van Staveren(Leiden 1613/14 – 1669 Leiden)

ca. 1640–45
oil on panel
86.7 x 75.2 cm
signed in light paint along angel’s shield onarmrest of king’s throne: “JOHANNESSTAVEREN 1(6?)(??)”
JvS-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Esther before Ahasuerus” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/esther-before-ahasuerus/(archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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During the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, the beautiful Jewish orphan

Comparative Figures

Esther, heroine of the Old Testament Book of Esther, won the heart of theaustere Persian king Ahasuerus and became his wife (Esther 2:17). Esther
had been raised by her cousin Mordecai, who made Esther swear that she
would keep her Jewish identity a secret from her husband. However, whenAhasuerus appointed as his minister the anti-Semite Haman, who issued adecree to kill all Jews, Mordecai begged Esther to reveal her Jewish heritage
to Ahasuerus and plead for the lives of her people. Esther agreed, saying toMordecai: “I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I
perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).
Esther’s dramatic words were not exaggerated. Not only was it risky toconfess her long-kept secret, but anyone who approached the king without
being summoned also risked the death penalty unless Ahasuerus extended
his golden scepter as a sign of benevolence (Esther 4:11). Fortunately,
Ahasuerus adored his wife and lowered his scepter upon seeing her. WhileFig 1. Jan van Staveren, The
Circumcision of Christ, 1640, oil onpanel, 9.2 x 56.8 cm, Sale,
Sotheby’s, London, 1 November
2007, no. 94

touching the tip of the scepter, Esther invited Ahasuerus and Haman to abanquet. During this banquet, Esther disclosed her Jewish identity and told
Ahasuerus of Haman’s plan to kill her people. The enraged Ahasuerus had
Haman executed and appointed Mordecai as his minister instead. The brave
Esther thus prevented the annihilation of the Jews.
Jan van Staveren has situated the scene in a grand hall with red and grey
marble columns and multiple arches receding into the background. Seated inan elaborate golden throne decorated with lush ornamental curls andimpressive lion-shaped armrests, the powerful king towers above thedisproportionately small figure of the queen.[1] Wearing a turban adorned withfeathers and a jeweled ornament consisting of a ruby and three pearls,
Ahasuerus is clad in a fur-trimmed, red velvet robe with gold-brocade
patterns identical to those of the cushion beneath his golden slippers. Esther,
who gracefully bows her head as she touches the tip of the scepter, isFig 2. Jan van Staveren, A Hermit
at Prayer in a Grotto with ClassicalRuins, 1641, oil on panel, 61 x 47
cm, Private Collection, photo ©
Christie’s Images / Bridgeman
Imageslavishly attired in “her royal robes” (Esther 5:1). Her silver satin dress istrimmed with gold brocade and adorned with precious stones, and her crownis decorated with feathers and an ornament identical to that in her husband’sturban. Nevertheless, by portraying Esther in a light-colored dress separating
her from the crimson, brown, and golden hues surrounding her, and byplacing her alone in the center of the composition, Van Staveren poignantly
emphasizes her fragile circumstances in this courtly drama.
Signed “Johannes Staveren” on the cartouche held by the sculpted angel on© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Ahasuerus’s armrest, Van Staveren probably executed this work, which isone of his most ambitious paintings, in the first half of the 1640s.[2] The
composition strongly relates to his Circumcision of Christ, dated 1640 (fig 1).
[3]

Both paintings are executed in a similar palette and depict a grand, lofty

space with arches and ornamental pillars. In each instance three separate
groups, two on the main floor and one in an elevated marble courtyard in thebackground, witness the main scene in the foreground. A similar backgroundwith a multi-arched edifice also appears in Van Staveren’s Hermit at Prayer
in a Grotto with Classical Ruins, dated 1641 (fig 2), and in his Praying
Hermit, dated to the mid-1640s (fig 3).[4] The face of the hermit in this latterwork is similar to the old man standing directly behind Ahasuerus’s scepter,

Fig 3. Jan van Staveren, Praying
Hermit, ca. 1645, oil on panel, 33 x
27 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
SK-C-228

suggesting that Van Staveren worked with the same model or prototype inthis period of his career.
Several elements of the composition are reminiscent of Gerrit Dou’s(1613–75) work of the 1640s, suggesting that Van Staveren adopted themfrom his fellow townsman and possible teacher.[5] The prominent, dark blue
parasol in the background of Van Staveren’s painting, no doubt a reference
to the exotic setting of the story, appears in Dou’s work from the mid-1630s
until well into the 1650s.[6] The reliefs of dancing, naked putti surrounding thebottoms of the grey marble columns in the background of Esther before
Ahasuerus also feature in several works by Dou, such as his 1646 portrait ofJohan Wittert van der Aa in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.[7]Fig 4. Philips Galle after Maarten
van Heemskerck, Esther before
Ahasuerus, 1564, engraving, 200 x245 cm, London, The BritishMuseum, Department of Prints andDrawings, inv. 1923,1106.4, ©
Trustees of the British Museum

An important visual source for Van Staveren’s interpretation of this biblicalnarrative was undoubtedly a 1564 engraving of Esther before Ahasuerus byMaarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) (fig 4). In Van Heemskerck’scomposition, the scene is set in a similar grand space with arches andcolumns in the background, and shows Esther kneeling obediently on thesteps of Ahasuerus’s high throne.[8] It is also possible that Van Staveren
drew inspiration from the theater. Indeed, the red velvet curtain hanging fromthe top and sides of the painting, as well as the rhetorical gestures andexpressive glances of the onlookers, suggest that we are watching atheatrical scene.[9] There were several Dutch plays devoted to the story ofEsther that Van Staveren could have known, for instance Jacob van
Zevecote’s 1621 play Esther, or Nicolaes Fonteyn’s 1638 play Esther, ofte ’t
beeldt der ghehoorsaamheid (Esther, or the Picture of Obedience).[10]Two figures on the left of Ahasuerus’s throne, the seated, somewhat sternlooking man in a blue-feathered turban and the stodgy man in a fur bonnet
holding a letter, look as though they might represent specific characters in© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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the story. It is possible that they depict, respectively, Mordecai, who incited
Haman’s rage by refusing to stand up in his presence, and Haman. AlthoughMordecai does not appear in court and Haman is not present during themeeting between Esther and Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, it is likely that
Van Staveren combined various elements of the story or referenced a play inwhich the playwright had taken certain liberties.[11] For instance, in Joannes
Serwouter’s 1659 play, Hester, oft verlossing der Jooden (Esther, or theDeliverance of the Jews), Haman is present during the encounter between
Esther and Ahasuerus.[12] It is also possible that the man holding the letter is
Ahasuerus’s chamberlain Thares, a character from the theater that does notfeature in the Book of Esther. In Serwouter’s description of this scene, andpossibly in earlier plays as well, Thares hides a letter containing a plot to kill
the king under his garments. When Ahasuerus finds out about the letter heorders Haman to read it out loud. If this figure in Van Staveren’s painting
depicts Thares, Haman could be the seated man in the blue-featheredturban.[13]The large number of Dutch plays devoted to the story of Esther stems fromthe parallels the Dutch saw between Esther’s triumph over Haman, which
saved her people from the threat of extinction, and their own victory overSpain.[14] This connection would undoubtedly have appealed to the firstowner of Van Staveren’s painting.

- Ilona van Tuinen, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Esther before Ahasuerus
Page 6 of 9Endnotes

1. For the throne, Van Staveren was clearly inspired by the legendary throne of King Solomon,
described in Kings 1:18–20 as being covered in gold and having six steps and the figure of alion on each side of the throne. Because of their similar subject matter, this throne often
appears both in scenes of the Queen of Sheba before King Solomon and of Esther before
Ahasuerus. For an elaborate depiction of the throne, which was probably not known to Van
Staveren but illustrates the pictorial tradition, see Artus Quellinus, The Queen of Sheba
before King Solomon, oil on canvas, 151 x 237 cm, Vienna, Liechtenstein Collection.
Quellinus even included the multiple lions that allegedly stood next to Solomon’s throne.
Already in the sixteenth century, Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) incorporated
elements of the Bible’s description of Solomon’s throne, especially the lion armrests and thesix steps, in his 1564 engraving Esther before Ahasuerus (see fig. 4).
2. For a similar dating, see Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols.
(Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94), 6: 3743, 4066, no. 2447, who makes a stylistic comparison
between Esther before Ahasuerus, Van Staveren’s 1640 Circumcision of Christ (fig. 1), thenin the Galerie Caretto-Turin, and his 1646 Noli me Tangere in the Cevat Collection.
3. Although the painting was said to be monogrammed by Gerrit Dou when it was sold atauction in 2007, this work is now rightly attributed to Van Staveren. There is no reason toquestion the authenticity of the date.
4. The first painting was sold at Christie’s, New York, 4 April 2007, as no. 53. For the second ofthese paintings (Rijksmuseum), see Eric Jan Sluijter et al., Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit
Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum DeLakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 227, no. 77. Sluijter dates this painting to the mid-1640s based on astylistic comparison with Staveren’s two paintings with hermits, one in the Národni Galerie inPrague, dated 1644, and the other in the Statens Museum in Copenhagen, dated 1650.
5. See Piet Bakker’s biography of Jan van Staveren in this catalogue, in which he discusses theuncertainty surrounding our knowledge of the relationship between Dou and Van Staveren.
Although the similarities between Dou’s and Van Staveren’s work suggest a teacher-pupil
relationship, both artists were around the same age.
6. For instance, in ca. 1635 Dou included a closed, dark blue parasol in the background of his
Scholar Interrupted at His Writing in the present collection (see GD-102), and an open
parasol in his Self-Portrait, ca. 1645, oil on panel, 12.4 x 8.3 cm, Kremer Collection,and Quack, 1652, oil on panel, 112.4 x 83.4 cm, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans vanBeuningen, inv. St.4. See Dominique Surh’s entry on GD-102 for a symbolic reading of theparasol. In Esther before Ahasuerus, Van Staveren appears to have included the parasol only
as a reference to the exotic locale. For other paintings with scenes set in the Far East and© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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including parasols, see, for instance, Moyses van Wtenbrouck, Moses Found by the Daughterof Pharaoh, 1623, oil on panel, 50 x 74.5 cm, sale, Servarts, Brussels, 11 September 1999,
no. 414, and Jan Victor’s much later Portrait of a Family in Eastern Attire, 1670, oil on canvas,
99 x 133.5 cm, sale, Sotheby’s, London, 3 July, 1997, no. 225.
7. Gerrit Dou, Portrait of Johan Wittert van der Aa, 1646, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam. Dou continued to use this motif throughout the rest of his career. See also TheDoctor, 1653, oil on panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; Young Mother, 1658, oil on
panel, The Hague, Mauritshuis; and Astronomer by Candlelight, ca. 1665, oil on panel, 32 x21.1 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Interestingly, the putti in Dou’s painting
are facing outward, whereas Van Staveren’s figures are seen from the back.
8. For a later depiction of this scene that more or less follows Heemskerck’s composition, see
Jan Steen’s Esther Before Ahasuerus, ca. 1665, oil on panel, 106 x 39 cm, The State
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 878.
9. See also Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “The Wrath of Ahasuerus,” in H. Perry Chapman, WouterTh. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. Guido Jansen(Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven,1996), 241–44, for his discussion of Jan Steen’s painting The Wrath of Ahasuerus dated toca. 1671–73, in which Steen’s similarly dramatic representation can be explained by theartist’s reliance on Serwouter’s play.
10. According to Ceneton, the Leiden University database of Dutch theater plays, there are noknown copies of Jacob van Zevecote’s Esther; the 1623 edition of this play, printed inAntwerp, has copies in the Stadsbibliotheek Antwerpen and the Gent University Library.
According to Ceneton, there are two copies of Nicolaes Fonteyn, Esther, ofte ’t beeldt derghehoorsaamheid (Amsterdam, 1638), one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris(inv. F: Yi. 626), and one at the Leiden University Library (inv. 1091 D 13 : 2). The present
author has not had the opportunity to consult the plays by Zevecote and Fonteyn. As for otherplays about Esther written before 1650, Ceneton further lists Hester en Assverus, written byan anonymous author in around 1599, a copy of which is in the Rijksarchief in Hasselt, theNetherlands; and Joris Berckmans’s 1649 Esther, a copy of which is in the Royal Library inBrussels. See also Theodor Dunkelgrün, “Neerlands Israel: Political Theology, ChristianHebraism, Biblical Antiquarianism, and Historical Myth,” in Myth in History, History in Myth,ed. Laura Cruz and Willem Frijhoff (Leiden, 2009), 201–36, esp. n. 23, for the mention of two
additional plays: Abraham de Koning’s 1618 Esther and Jacob Revius’s 1630 Haman, aTragedy, not listed in Ceneton or Digital Library for Dutch Literature (DBNL).
11. Esther 5: “Mordecai sat outside the king’s gate, since he was not authorized to appear in theking’s court. Haman was not present either, but was later summoned by Ahasuerus.”
12. Joannes Serwouter, Hester, oft verlossing der Jooden (Hester, or the Deliverance of theJews) (Amsterdam, 1659). According to Ceneton, the Leiden University database of Dutch© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Esther before Ahasuerus
Page 8 of 9theater plays, Serwouter’s play appears to have been very popular: it was reprinted fivetimes, in 1662, 1667, 1698, 1732, and 1751.
13. Joannes Serwouter, Hester, oft verlossing der Jooden (Hester, or the Deliverance of theJews) (Amsterdam, 1659), 27–30, in the third act. Without knowledge of the contents of theearlier plays by Fonteyn and Van Zevecote, however, it remains impossible to ascertain
whether Thares appears in these plays as well, and thus whether Van Staveren could have
known about Thares in the 1640s.
14. For the connection between Esther’s triumph and the Dutch victory, see, for instance,
Theodor Dunkelgrün, “Neerlands Israel: Political Theology, Christian Hebraism, Biblical
Antiquarianism, and Historical Myth,” Myth in History, History in Myth, ed. Laura Cruz andWillem Frijhoff (Leiden, 2009), 201–36, and Simon Schama, The Embarrassment ofRiches (London, 1987), 102–3.

Provenance(Sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 3 December 1959, no. 109 [for 35,000 Austrian shillings]).
(Sale, Am Kinsky, Vienna, 15 March 2005, no. 1 [Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc., New York]).
From whom acquired by the present owner, 2005.

Exhibition History
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, “Work, Pray & Admire: New Views on Calvinism and Art,”
11 November 2018–26 May 2019 [lent by the present owner].

References
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94, 6:
3743, 4066, no. 2447.

Technical Summary© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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The support is a rectangular composite panel comprising three vertically grained oak planks ofthree different widths and two vertical shims.[1] There are no bevels or machine tool marks. Atraditional cradle has been removed and a spring-loaded, wooden, secondary support
adhered.[2] There is one red wax collection seal and one import stamp, but no stencils, labels, orpanel maker’s marks.
Under magnification, there appear to be two thinly and evenly applied light-colored ground layers
separated by paint. The paint along the architecture and swags of drapery in the background has
been applied smoothly and opaquely. Details along Esther’s garment edge, elaborate jewels, andAhasuerus’s garment and throne have been applied with low rounded brushwork and delicate
impasto.
A network of drying cracks across the left plank suggests a compositional change. The Xradiograph reveals two narrow arches along the upper half of the left plank, where the marble
columns and architectural elements below the red drapery are located in the final composition.
The right side of the the right arch forms an abruptly cropped vertical line directly at the join
between the left and central planks, rather than extending onto the central plank in a diffuse way.
Further investigation is required to determine whether the left plank had been previously used or ifit was added and the composition widened on the left side during the paint stage.
No underdrawing is evident in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The images
suggest a compositional change to Esther’s proper right sleeve. Additional drying cracks suggest
changes during the paint stage to the left and right side of Ahasuerus’s head, along the small
figures’ heads to the left and right of the base of the gray column, along Esther’s proper rightsleeve, and in a circular pattern in Ahasuerus’s red garment, directly below his outstretched goldstaff.
The painting is signed and dated in light paint along the angel’s shield on the armrest of theKing’s throne.
The painting underwent panel work and was cleaned and restored prior to acquisition in 2005. It isin good condition and in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.
2. A small wood patch has also been applied to the reverse of a knot in the central plank. The
panelwork was undertaken by George Bisacca, paintings conservator, Metropolitan Museumof Art.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection