Public Domain Photo: Dish of serpentine with inlaid gold fish, pearls and other gemstones, 1st century BCE or CE, with 9th century mounts from the Court of Charles the Bald, purchased in 1793 by the Louvre Museum and currently in the inventory of Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre), Department of Decorative Arts, Richelieu, First Floor, Room No. 1, Paris, France.
Public Domain Photo: Gilded silver bridal crown by Swedish master goldsmith Bo Stefan with photos of four brides who had worn it in the period between 1938 and 1978. The brides are Eva Sterner (Mrs. C. J. Stefan Ridderstedt), Birgit Anderson (Mrs. C. Erik Ridderstedt), Märta Enbäck (Mrs. R. Stig Stefanson) and Ingegärd Stefanson (Mrs. Arne Klum), photo taken at the Church of Sweden, Täby, Sweden.
Image: The Toilette of Esther or La toilette d'Esther, an 1841 oil-on-canvas painting by French romantic painter Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856), with dimensions 45.5 cm x 35.5 cm (17.9” x 14.0”), presently located in Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
The Toilette of Esther depicts an incident from the Book of Esther, when Esther prepared herself to meet the ruler of Persia King Ahasuerus, who subsequently married her.
The theme of the painting is derived from the Book of Esther (2:8-9, 15), in which King Ahasuerus seeks a new queen after renouncing his wife Vashti. Esther, a woman of great beauty, finds favor with Hegai, the eunuch in charge of preparing women for presentation to the king. After seeing Esther, Ahasuerus chooses her as his wife. She later reveals that she is Jewish, and wanted the king to spare the lives of the Jews in his empire.
The choice of this Old Testament story about a young woman in a harem freed Chassériau to take advantage of elements of the Orientalist and Romantic movements. The presence of Asian women and ample jewelry further romanticizes Esther’s figure. Having previously painted a ‘Birth of Venus’ and a ‘Susanna and the Elders’, Chassériau found another theme in Esther which permitted a frankly sensual presentation of the female body.
It has been noted by art historians that the painting, ‘The Toilette of Esther’, later inspired painters such as François-Léon Benouville and Gustave Moreau. Vincent Pomarède of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon described the work as ‘one of the most famous (paintings) in the Louvre’.
