Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryEsther before Ahasuerus
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look across the empty floor from Esther’s limp body to the king’s foot braced on the step, then compare her heavy gold silk with his striped sleeves and white boots.
Queen Esther comes before her husband, the Persian king Ahasuerus, to plead for her people, and faints into her maids’ arms as he starts up from his throne. Artemisia Gentileschi, in the National Gallery’s words the most celebrated woman artist of her century, painted the scene in the 1620s on a canvas about 2.7 meters wide, with an empty stretch of floor between the two.
Oil on canvas · 82 in. × 8 ft. 11 3/4 in. (208.3 × 273.7 cm · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Baroque
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Esther before Ahasuerus
- Artist
- Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, born Rome 1593–died Naples 1654 or later)
- Date
- 1620s
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 82 in. × 8 ft. 11 3/4 in. (208.3 × 273.7 cm)
- Credit line
- Gift of Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll, 1969
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Baroque c. 1600–1750
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.