Esther and Ahasuerus
Geldorp Gortzius(Leuven 1553 – ca. 1619 Cologne)

1612
oil on panel
56.5 x 72.4 cm
Signed with monogram (partially legible) anddated in white paint in upper-right corner:
F[ecit]A[nno] [FA in ligature] 1612 / […]GG-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Esther and Ahasuerus” (2019). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/esther-and-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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The beautiful Queen Esther is one of the most important Jewish heroines in

Comparative Figures

the Old Testament. In the rich and complex Book of Esther, set during theBabylonian captivity of the Jews, the queen braves her own death in order tosave the Jewish people by approaching her husband, the austere Persian
King Ahasuerus. Though Ahasuerus had chosen his wife without knowing
she was Jewish, and Esther had never revealed her secret, she knew that
she had to acknowledge her Jewish heritage when her husband’s wicked
minister, Haman, decreed that all Jews be killed. Fortunately, when shecame into the king’s presence to invite him to a banquet, Ahasuerus lowered
his scepter, a sign that “she found favor in his sight” (Esther 5:2). At thebanquet, to which Esther also invited Haman, she revealed both her Jewish
background and the minister’s evil plan (Esther 7:1–10). Because of hisunwavering love for his wife, Ahasuerus ordered that Haman be killed andthe decree nullified, thus preventing the annihilation of the Jews.[1]Fig 1. Geldorp Gortzius, Portrait ofJeremias Boudinois, 1610, oil onpanel, 103 x 81 cm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, Jonkeer J. de Wittevan Citters Bequest, The Hague,
SK-A-916

Traditionally, depictions of scenes from the book of Esther showed either thedramatic encounter at Ahasuerus’s crowded court, with the king seated highon his throne and Esther obediently kneeling down in front of him (seeJvS-100), or the moment at Esther’s banquet when she reveals Haman’splan to Ahasuerus.[2] In this previously unpublished representation of Estherand Ahasuerus, the Flemish artist Geldorp Gortzius abandoned all reference
to the biblical narrative, and instead emphasized the tender interaction
between husband and wife. Geldorp depicted Esther and Ahasuerus as bustlength figures situated close to the picture plane. With a loving expression,

Fig 2. Geldorp Gortzius, Susanna
and the Elders, 1600–1604, oil onpanel, 47.5 x 70.5 cm, Museum ofFine Arts, Budapest, inv. no. 86.3

Ahasuerus has put his left arm around Esther’s shoulder while he offers her
the golden scepter. In return, Esther looks up at her husband devotedly while
she cradles his scepter with both hands. Geldorp’s intimate representation
might well have been inspired by the first-century historian Flavius
Josephus’s widely known Antiquities of the Jews, in which Ahasuerus“leaped from his throne, and took [Esther] in his arms, and recovered her, byembracing her, and speaking comfortably to her, . . . [telling her] not tosuspect any bad consequence on account of her coming to him without
being called, . . . but that she, who was a queen, as well as he a king might
be entirely secure.” Significantly, Josephus goes on to say that Ahasuerus“put the scepter into her hand.”[3]The couple’s richly appointed attire leaves no doubt of their regal status.
Esther is dressed in a brown fur mantle with a split at the shoulder revealingFig 3. Geldorp Gortzius, ThePenitent Mary Magdalen, n.d., oilon panel, 67 x 52 cm, Mauritshuis,The Hague, inv. no. 319

a white satin gown embroidered with patterns of gold. A crown and diademwith pearls and precious stones shimmer amidst her brown curls. Strings of© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Esther and Ahasuerus
Page 4 of 8pearls, too, adorn her neck and wrists. Ahasuerus wears a deep red mantle
over a dark green tunic trimmed with a golden collar inlaid with a ruby andpearls. His golden crown, the tips of which extend to the upper edge of thepanel, is also garnished with pearls.[4]Geldorp was primarily a portrait painter whose oeuvre mainly consists ofsingle portraits, sometimes as part of a pendant pair, such as the 1610
Portrait of Jeremias Boudinois in the Rijksmuseum (fig 1).[5] His rendering of
the protagonists as bust-length figures in the present work is typical of his
relatively few history paintings. One finds a similar composition in his twoother Old Testament works, Susanna and the Elders in Budapest (fig 2) andDavid and Bathsheba in Cologne.[6] Such portrait-like history paintings do notappear in the oeuvres of Geldorp’s teachers, Frans Francken the Elder andFrans Pourbus the Elder.[7] The artist’s development of this novelcompositional formula may have been rooted in his primary focus onportraiture. It may have also been related to his experience in Cologne,
where he lived from 1579 until his death, and the wishes of wealthy clients
who favored his portrait style.[8] The affluent Cologne banker and art collector
Everhard Jabach III (1567–1636), for instance, owned portraits by Geldorp ofhimself and his wife, as well as a Susanna and the Elders—likely the one now
in Budapest (fig 2). Horst Vey has convincingly proposed that Jabach may
have helped determine the composition of the latter.[9]The fine line between Geldorp’s portraits and history paintings inevitably
begs the question as to whether Esther and Ahasuerus was intended as aportrait historié. In the case of Esther, her idealized facial type suggests that
she was not intended to fulfill this purpose. In fact, Geldorp had already used
the same figure of Esther, with an almost identical expression, more thantwenty years earlier for his Mary Magdalene in 1589.[10] The same formula
recurs in an undated painting of the Penitent Mary Magdalene in theMauritshuis (fig 3).[11] Indeed, throughout his career, this same figure typereappears in a number of single-figure paintings, ranging from Mary
Magdalene and the Virgin Mary to the antique and mythological heroines
Lucretia and Venus.[12] In these renditions, Geldorp made only minor
variations in the figure’s dress, hand gestures, and attributes.
Ahasuerus’s features, on the other hand, are less idealized than those ofEsther, and his facial type does not appear elsewhere in Geldorp’s oeuvre.
He is depicted as a man of roughly the same age as Esther, quite unlike thedescription of him in written and pictorial accounts. Although this could
indicate that Geldorp created a portrait historié exclusively for a male patron,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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it is hard to imagine a scenario in which a sitter would have wanted to be
portrayed as Ahasuerus without his wife serving as the model for Esther.
Also, the specificity of Ahasuerus’s appearance does not necessarily link
him to conventional portraits such as the one of Jeremias Boudinois (fig 1).
In this respect, Ahasuerus can perhaps best be compared to Geldorp’s Four
Evangelists from around 1605 in the Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, who all
have strikingly different features, but who fit comfortably in the idiom ofstylized renditions of historical figures.[13]The unusual presence of the halo above Esther’s head raises furtherquestions about the identification of the subject. Traditionally, Old Testament
figures are not depicted with haloes because they are, after all, not saints.[14]Indeed, Geldorp did not include haloes when he portrayed the Old
Testament heroines Bathsheba and Susanna, nor in his paintings of Lucretiaand Venus. The only New Testament scene that features a queen and a kingholding a scepter is that of Christ Crowning the Virgin, but in such an
instance Christ also would be portrayed with a halo. Esther’s halo in thepresent picture might be connected to the typological tradition of herintercession with Ahasuerus; her efforts to save the Jews were likened to theVirgin’s intercession with God for the salvation of mankind. In the Biblia
Pauperum, one of the most well-known medieval typological sources, forexample, this association is illustrated by the juxtaposition of Esther andAhasuerus with the Coronation of the Virgin.[15] Reinforcing this relationshipmay have appealed to Geldorp’s predominantly Catholic clientele in
Cologne, resulting in this exceptional portrayal of the Old Testament heroine.

- Ilona van Tuinen, 2019

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Esther and Ahasuerus
Page 6 of 8Endnotes

1. See the entry in this catalogue for Jan van Stavaren’s Esther before Ahasuerus (JvS-100) fora more traditional rendition of the scene, as well as a more elaborate account of the story.
2. For an influential sixteenth-century example of the former, see, for instance, Philips Galle’s
1564 engraving after Maarten van Heemskerck’s design of Esther before Ahasuerus, 202 x
245 mm (British Museum, London; see JvS-100, fig. 4). For a contemporary depiction of theFeast of Esther, see Pieter Lastman, The Feast of Esther, ca. 1610–19, oil on panel, 52 x 78
cm (National Museum, Warsaw).
3. Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, ca. 93–94 AD, book 11:6:9. English translation byWilliam Whiston, The Works of Flavius Josephus, the Learned and Authentic Jewish Historian(Belfast, 1841), 305.
4. Interestingly, the painting retains all four original bevels and has not been reduced in size,indicating that the present composition is identical to Geldorp’s original work. See theTechnical Summary.
5. The pendant is the Portrait of Lucretia del Prado, 1610, oil on panel, 105 x 80 cm(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Both portraits, along with seven others by Geldorp of the samefamily with ties to Middelburg, entered the Rijksmuseum’s collection as part of the substantial
De Witte van Citters bequest. See Gerdien Wuestman, “Het familjie boeckje van Pieter
Boudaen Courten (1594–1668): Memoires van een geportretteerde,” Bulletin van het
Rijksmuseum 53 (2005): 42–61.
6. For the dating of Susanna and the Elders to ca. 1600 on the basis of a print by Crispijn dePasse and a painting by Melchior Geldorp dated 1605, see Horst Vey, “Susanna und dieÄltesten von Geldorp Gortzius in Budapest,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48/49 (1987/1988):
187–213. The David and Bathsheba, oil on canvas, 58.5 x 80 cm (Wallraf-Richartz Museum,Cologne) is dated 1602. To the present author’s knowledge, these are the only Old
Testament stories Geldorp produced. Geldorp also depicted single New Testament figuresand saints as close-up half-figures. For Geldorp’s four paintings of the evangelists, see PaulDirkse, “Vier evangelisten geschilderd door Geldorp Gortzius,” in Begijnen, pastoors enpredikanten. Religie en kunst in de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden, 2001), 15–19.
7. For Geldorp’s training, see the biography by Piet Bakker in this catalogue. Both Pourbus andFrancken, like Geldorp, were predominantly portrait painters, but their history paintings
contain various figures and a distinct narrative focus. See, for instance, Frans Pourbus theElder, David and Abigail, ca. 1570–79, oil on panel, 101.8 x 157.2 cm (KunsthistorischesMuseum, Vienna). Incidentally, Pourbus painted this work during the decade that Geldorp
was his student, which may help to explain why the facial types of Pourbus’s David and© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Abigail are similar to those in the present work. See also Frans Francken the Elder, TheAdoration of the Magi, ca. 1600, oil on copper, 28.3 x 35.8 cm (Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum,Braunschweig).
8. For Geldorp’s status as favorite portraitist of the Cologne upper class, see Ilja M. Veldman,“Keulen als toevluchtsoord voor Nederlandse kunstenaars (1567–1612)”, Oud Holland 107,
no. 1 (1993): 34–58, esp. 46–47.
9. Horst Vey argued that Jabach’s decision to commission Geldorp Gortzius to portray thisscene was connected to Jabach’s personal motto, “Virtue above all” (German: “Die Tugendlebt über den Tod hinaus”). See Horst Vey, “Susanna und die Ältesten von Geldorp Gortzius
in Budapest,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48–49 (1987–88): 197. Jabach may have requested
a depiction of this scene without any possible distractions, as in Geldorp’s closely framedbust-length version, so as to keep the focus on his motto. It is not clear whether Jabach
owned the Susanna and the Elders in Budapest or another version of this work. Considering
the high level of repetition in Geldorp’s oeuvre, it is likely that the composition was similar, if
not the same.
10. Attributed to Geldorp Gortzius, Mary Magdalene (?), 1589, oil on panel, 51 x 41 cm (location
unknown; auctioned at Hargesheimer & Günther Kunstauktioned Düsseldorf, 16 January2010, no. 64, unsold). Though it is not entirely certain whether this painting was executed byGeldorp, the composition is certainly typical for the master, and must have been designed byhim.
11. Geldorp Gortzius, The Penitent Mary Magdalene, n.d., oil on panel, 67 x 52 cm (Mauritshuis,The Hague); see Quentin Buvelot, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue(Zwolle, 2004), 124–25, no. 319.
12. See attributed to Geldorp Gortzius, The Madonna in Prayer, oil on panel, 50.6 x 42 cm(location unknown; auctioned at Sotheby’s Olympia, 8 April 2003, no. 148 [unsold]); Geldorp
Gortzius, Lucretia, oil on panel, 59.6 x 48.9 cm (location unknown; formerly collection Mrs.
S.M.C. Jungeling, The Hague, auctioned at Arts & Antiques Group, 7 May 2012, no. 16);
Geldorp Gortzius, Venus, oil on panel, 59.9 x 50 cm (Art Market; Christie’s Amsterdam, 8May 2012, no. 55 [unsold]).
13. The four paintings include John, 1604; Marcus, 1605; Matthew, 1606; and Luke [n.d.], eachoil on panel, ca. 82 x 64.5 cm (each Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht). See Paul Dirkse,“Vier evangelisten geschilderd door Geldorp Gortzius,” in Begijnen, pastoors en predikanten.
Religie en kunst in de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden, 2001), 15–19.
14. Haloes were reserved for saints and figures from the New Testament.
15. See Avril Henry, Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile Edition (Ithaca, 1987), 117, with commentaryon 119. The third scene that is represented in this context is that of Solomon Enthroning His
Mother Bethsabee. On the Speculum humanae salvationis, another important typological© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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source, see Horst Appuhn, Heilsspiegel: Die Bilder des mittelalterlichen Erbauungsbuches
Speculum humanae salvationis (Dortmund, 1981), 73, with commentary on 112–13, where
the connection between Esther and the Virgin as intercessors is illustrated by thejuxtaposition of Esther and Ahasuerus with Mary Showing Christ Her Breasts.

Provenance
Joseph Topin, Aix-en-Provence, France, around 1840 (as by Battoni).
Félix Vieil, art dealer, Aix-en-Provence, around 1900; by descent to his granddaughter, Aix-enProvence; (Sale, Christie’s, Paris, 15 November 2006, no. 306; [Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc.,New York]).
From whom acquired by the present owner, 2007.

Technical Summary
The painting was prepared on a single plank of horizontally grained wood. All four edges of thereverse are evenly beveled, indicating that the panel retains its original size. The panel wasprepared with a thin, white ground that does not obscure the texture of the wood grain. The paint
was applied in thin layers, with low brush marks and glazes.
Infrared reflectography did not reveal any underdrawing, except for a small change to the fingers
of Esther’s proper left hand. A glossy but well-saturating varnish covers the surface. The varnish
has been disturbed along the edges where it came into contact with the frame rabbet.
The painting has not been treated since its acquisition and remains in a good state ofpreservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. These technical notes are based on a technical examination report by Annette Rupprecht,
dated November 2011.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection