The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt
In every gallery room you see portrayals of Esther as a paragon of beauty and virtue.
What did Esther look like? That’s what we wanted to know as we concocted costumes for the Purim fair when I was a girl. The illustrated stories we read in religious school were useless, with their flattened renderings. How should we picture the beautiful and courageous young woman who, before throwing herself at the mercy of an impetuous king, asked, “How can I live on to see the destruction of my people?”— a question that we recognized was very much on the minds of our parents and grandparents during the postwar period.
The narrative of the Book of Esther, set in Persia during the time of the Babylonian captivity, in the sixth century BCE, chronicles Jewish defiance and triumph, but the simple tale, with its reversals and stock characters, represents something larger and more universal. The current show at The Jewish Museum in New York, “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” which runs from March 7 through August 10, focuses on rich adaptations of the story as it was interpreted during the Golden Age of the Netherlands, a time of religious tolerance ushered in with the Dutch rebellion against Spain in 1588 and lasting nearly a hundred years. As is often the case, such inadvertent borrowings can invigorate the story and enlarge perspective.
Rembrandt was born in Leiden in 1606, the son of a miller who was prosperous enough to send the boy to school. Sometime between 1631 and 1632 he moved to Amsterdam, where, because of his abundant talent as an artist, he soon established a studio with as many as 50 students and assistants. All around him, the city was filled with exotic goods, markets and shops overflowing with products from Palestine, Greece and Egypt—cotton, carpets, jewels, perfumes, olives, lemons, peaches, nuts, candies—taffeta from Spain, silk from Lyon, and K’ang Hsi porcelain pots. Traders from around the globe found a home there along with Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal, as well as Ashkenazim from Poland. There were also Christians from Northern and Central Europe, Puritan separatists from the British Isles, and a small population of freed Black slaves. The Jews came to Amsterdam with ties to banking, shipping, trade, diamonds and books, and with their help the city became the world center for printing. The Dutch book trade thrived with its many editions of the Bible and translations produced in languages ranging from English, French, Spanish and Hebrew to Swedish, Hungarian and Armenian. The young Dutch nation embraced the Bible stories, making use of them as parables of civic virtues, and the Book of Esther became a particular favorite as a metaphor for Dutch patriotism, with a beautiful queen who stood as an icon of wisdom and dignity, reminding them of the way they had overcome Spanish bondage and established a more tolerant society.
The vitrines at The Jewish Museum exhibit are filled with objects that demonstrate the felicitous intersection of Dutch and Jewish culture during this time. There is the cartographer Balthasar Florisz’s hand-colored map that shows every house in Amsterdam and Adolf van der Laan’s handsome engraving of the Portuguese and German Synagogues; two cast-iron firebacks expressively engraved with the figures of Esther and Ahasuerus; and tin-glazed decorative tiles showing scenes from the Bible with a droll depiction of Esther kneeling before the king as she invites him to her feast.
In every gallery room you see portrayals of Esther as a paragon of beauty and virtue as she was refashioned in Dutch style. A series of portraits painted by the artist Gerrit van Honthorst shows three high-ranking women dressed in regal gowns, wearing crowns and holding scepters as though they have become Esthers of the new generation. The artist Jan Lievens depicts Queen Esther in a festive gown with pearls threaded through her hair, dramatically pointing an accusatory finger at Haman while Ahasuerus tightens his fists as if he’s about to strike the villain with his own hands, and Pieter Lastman produced an equally dramatic tableau in which Haman begs for mercy and Esther swoons.
A quietly majestic portrait, known today as A Jewish Heroine from the Hebrew Bible, serves as the centerpiece of the exhibit. Before the 19th century, paintings were seldom identified by title, but it’s been persuasively argued, particularly because of Rembrandt’s many other compositions based on the Esther Scroll, that this splendidly dressed young woman sitting with unusual composure while an older woman combs her hair can be presumed to be Esther preparing for her entrance to the royal palace after three days and nights of fasting and prayer. As in many of the other paintings, Rembrandt’s Esther has the trappings of a Dutch princess. She wears pearls and bracelets while a chatelaine hangs from her waist and spills onto her rounded belly. Rather than a crown, a thin jeweled band with a feather holds her hair in place. The gossamer sleeves of her gown glitter under her crimson velvet mantle ornamented with gold and jewels. The train has been lifted off the floor and spread along the frame of the chair so that it wraps around her for protection. There is a profound simplicity to the composition and the arrangement of the luminescent figure in space. The dark background barely reveals a table raised on a platform, a gold dish and gold salver with papers and a luxurious gold and jeweled chain. Nonetheless, this is a setting that befits a queen, and it is presented with dramatic authority as the figure allows her elegantly shaped left hand to fall freely along the arm of the chair while she gently touches her right hand to her torso, a gesture of balance and integrity.
The show also includes two versions of Rembrandt’s engraving, The Great Jewish Bride (probably Esther). Scholars are in agreement that the sitter, with her round face and soft, wild hair, is most probably Rembrandt’s young wife, Saskia, who sits with a marvelous massiveness, elaborately dressed in layers of fine cloth and fur, a delicate filet with a flower encircles her head and, with her left hand, she holds onto a rolled-up scroll. The engraving is so finely prepared and the hatching so elaborate, differentiating texture, light and shade, that you might be momentarily distracted before returning your gaze to take in the depth of seriousness in the face and the subtlest tension in the expression of her eyes. When you do, the recompense is a deeper understanding of Esther’s virtue.
The current Jewish Museum show has been built around a blending of fine art and Judaica, beginning with the museum’s own Esther Scroll with printed border and handwritten text made by the engraver and draftsman Salom Italia, one of only a handful of Jewish artists who lived in Amsterdam in the 17th century. It is thought that he came to the Netherlands from Mantua or Venice around 1641, and he became known for the production of megillahs that integrated the Biblical narrative with imagery from the Dutch diaspora, filling his copper engravings of Amsterdam’s triumphal arches with the Hebrew text. In this rendering, the figures of Esther and Ahasuerus stand like statues on plinths, while above their heads there are bas-reliefs of the Dutch countryside, whimsical lions and peacock-styled urns filled with flowers.
One of the loveliest objects in the exhibition is a silver Dotar Lottery Bowl with handles decorated with silver leaves. The Dotar was a charitable bridal society established by the Sephardic community to raise dowry money for young women who were orphaned, especially those who had immigrated to Amsterdam to escape the Inquisition and religious persecution. The Society chose Purim as the date for the lottery because of the lots cast by Haman, and the museum has included several Dotar labels that testify to the mixture of tragedy and hopefulness that continues to belong to the Jewish story. Here is the Dotar Appeal on behalf of the orphan Clara de Almeida, who suffered so much because of the Inquisition and came to Amsterdam in Rembrandt’s time:
Gentlemen, Administrators, and Treasurer, of the Holy brotherhood of orphan girls, Clara de Almeida, who lives in Bayonne, an orphan on both her father’s and mother’s side, the daughter of Framco Rodrigues [de] Almeida whose relatives suffered [at the hands of the Inquisition] in Cordoba and the sister of the martyr Isaque Dalmeida Berl who suffered [at the hands of the Inquisition] in Santiago [de Compostela] in Galicia, glorifying the name of God. She is related to the third degree to Jacob Ysrael Bernal.
Frances Brent is a New York-based freelance writer.
Top image: Jan Lievens, The Feast of Esther, c. 1625 (Credit: North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh / Bridgeman Images).