Esther’s Fainting Before Ahasuerus, after Antoine Coypel

 

Esther, a character from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, is a heroic female figure who saves her people from persecution at the hands of Haman, a minister of the King of Persia. The theme was popularised at court by Racine’s tragedy, written in 1689 at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for the young noblewomen educated at the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis in Saint-Cyr. The tragedy enjoyed great success in society;Esther, it transpired , went beyond the cause of Port-Royal to demonstrate the power of Grace: ‘I proposed the subject of Esther to them, which struck them at first; this story seemed to them to be full of great lessons on love for God and detachment from the world whilst living in the world itself’.

The Persian king Ahasuerus had married Esther for love, without knowing that she was Jewish. Whilst his favourite, Haman—an enemy of Esther and the Hebrews in the kingdom—secures their condemnation, Esther appears before the king and faints (Act II, Scene 6). She then reveals to the king that she herself is Jewish and secures a pardon for the Hebrews, whilst Haman is put to death by the people.

The scene depicted here recalls the dramatic moment when Esther, in the presence of Ahasuerus, faints before the sovereign—who is angered by her audacity, yet also considerate in the face of his wife’s distress. Esther faints in the arms of two maids, whilst beside her Ahasuerus rises from his throne and, in astonishment and concern, turns his gaze towards his unconscious wife. With his left hand, he takes the golden sceptre and places it on Esther’s shoulders, signalling that he wishes to listen to her. In the original painting, the twisted columns and sweeping drapery serve to dramatise the view of Ahasuerus’s palace, a composition that is reproduced in a simplified form in this copy. On the left stands Haman, holding in his hands the edict that is soon to be revoked, serving as a dramatic reminder of the imminent threat.

The original painting, now in the Louvre, is slightly larger in size and features a reversed composition. Coypel presented this painting at the 1704 Salon, having previously presented it to Louis XIV through the Superintendent of Buildings, Édouard Colbert de Villarcerf, in 1697, as the king deemed the painting ‘worthy of a place in his Petite Galerie, where the only modern paintings are those by Le Brun and Mignard’. In 1717–1718, Antoine Coypel painted the tapestry cartoon based on his painting.

The painting was engraved by Jean Audran, and it was through this print—which inevitably presents a reversed composition—that numerous copies were subsequently produced. This copy is of fairly good quality, although the rendering of the fabrics is far less detailed. However, it clearly retains the same rhetoric of gesture, somewhat static but very explicit for the viewer. The spiral formed by the figures standing on a circular rug, which in turn lies on a marble floor with a circular pattern, is also rendered with less subtlety than in the original painting.

 

Olivier Bonfait, Béatrice Sarrazin (eds.), ‘Charles de La Fosse and the Arts in France around 1700. International Symposium, 18–19 May 2015’, Bulletin of the Château de Versailles Research Centre [online].

Carl Hernmarck and Roger-Armand Weigert, Art in France and Sweden (1693–1718). Extracts from a correspondence between the architect Nicodème Tessin the Younger and Daniel Conström, Stockholm, 1964.

Nicole Garnier, Antoine Coypel (1661–1722), Neuilly-sur-Seine, Arthena, 1989.

The Theatre of Passions, 1697–1759: Cleopatra, Medea, Iphigenia, exhibitioncatalogue (Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 11 February – 22 May 2011), Lyon, Fage éditions, 2011.

Laurent Thirouin, ‘Esther, an (Augustinian) figure of grace’,*Courrier Blaise Pascal*, 41–42, 2020, 19–39.