594.
Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Esther about to venture into the presence of Ahasuerus. From the Soulages Collection. Flemish, first half of the 16th century. Height 13 feet, breadth 11 feet 6 inches.
The history, as here shown us, of a most eventful achievement, is at top distributed into four groups, each made up of figures rather small in stature; and at bottom, into other five clusters, in which all the personages assume a proportion little short of life-size.
Beginning with those higher compartments on the piece, we find in the two at the left-hand side the commencement of this Scriptural record. The mighty Ahasuerus is presented to us in the second of those two groups there, as seated amid trees, and robed as would have been a sovereign prince during the first half of the sixteenth century. All about his head and neck the Persian king wears, wrapped in loose folds, a linen cloth, over which he has a large scarlet hat with an ornament for a crown, made up of small silver shield-shaped plates, marked with wedge-like stripes of a light blue colour, or heraldically, argent, five piles azure meeting at the base; over his shoulders falls an unspotted ermine cape jagged all about its edge so as to look as if meant for a nebulée border. Upon the left breast of this sort of mantle is sewed a little crimson shield-shaped badge marked in white seemingly with the letter A, not having, however, the stroke through it, but above, the sign of contraction dashed. He wears a blue tabard, is girt with a sword, and holds in his left hand a tall wand, that golden sceptre which, if not outstretched in token of clemency towards the man or woman who had the hardihood to come unbidden to his presence, signified that such a bold intruder, were she the queen herself, must be put to death. Having nobles and guards about him, this monarch of one hundred and twenty-seven provinces is handing to Haman, one of those three princes before him, a written document from which hang two royal seals: this is that terrible decree, which, out of spite towards Mordecai, and hatred for the Jewish race, Haman had won from his partial master Ahasuerus, for the slaughter, on a certain day, of every Hebrew within the Persian empire.
Yet further to the left is another group, wherein we observe some of the richly-attired functionaries of the empire. A bareheaded old man, a royal messenger, who holds up his left hand as if to indicate he had come from the court of Ahasuerus, delivers to one of the nobles there this original decree to be copied out and sent in all directions through the kingdom.
Looking still at top, but to the far right, we have in the background, amid the trees, a large house, from out of the midst of which stands up a tall red beam, the gibbet, fifty cubits high, got ready by Haman at his wife’s and friends’ suggestion for hanging on it Mordecai. In this foreground we behold Haman clad in a blue mantle and a rich golden chain about his neck: to the man standing respectfully before him, cap in hand, Haman gives the written order duly authenticated by the two imperial seals upon it, for the execution of Mordecai. Immediately to the left of this scene we are presented with the inside view of a fine chamber hung with tapestry, and ornamented with tall vases, two of which are on a shelf close by a lattice-window. In the middle of this room is a group of three women: one of them, Esther, richly clad, is seated and wringing her hands in great grief, as if she had learned the fell death awaiting her uncle, and the slaughter already decreed of all her nation: two of her gentlewomen are with her, wailing, like their queen-mistress, the coming catastrophe.
Right in the centre of the piece, and occupying its most conspicuous position, we behold the tall stately figure of a beautiful young queen, splendidly arrayed, and wearing over the rich caul upon her head a royal diadem. She seems to have just arisen from the magnificent throne or rather faldstool close behind her. With both her hands clasped in supplication, she is followed in her upward course by her train of attendants—two ladies and a nobleman—all gaily dressed, threading their way through as they ascend from the hall below crowded with courtiers, men and women gossiping together in little knots, and set off in fashionable dress. While bending her steps, Esther looks towards the spot where Ahasuerus is sitting. At this moment an oldish man steps forward, clad after a beseeming fashion: in one hand he holds his red cap, while with the other hand he is stretching out, for Esther’s acceptance, his inscribed roll. This person must be Mordecai, thus shown as instructing and encouraging his niece-queen Esther in the hazardous work of saving her people’s lives, at the same time that he furnishes her with a copy of the decree for their utter annihilation.
This inner court of the King’s house where Esther is now standing over against the hall in which Ahasuerus sits upon his throne is crowded with courtiers, all remarkable for the elegance and costliness of their dress. In a circle of three great personages to the right, one of those high-born dames has brought with her her guitar, made in the form of the calabash, to help on by her music the expected mirth and revelry of the day.
In those several instances in which the royal decree is figured with the imperial seals hanging from it, the impression stamped upon the wax seems, no doubt, to be taken as the cipher of Ahasuerus, a large A, but without the stroke through it.
One remarkable feature among the ornaments of dress assumed by almost all the great personages in this piece of tapestry is the large-linked, heavy golden chain about the neck, worn as much by ladies as by gentlemen. The caps of the men are mostly square.
The elaborately-adorned, closely-fitting, round-shaped caul worn by the women in this court of Ahasuerus is in strict accordance with the female fashion abroad at the beginning of the sixteenth century; while here, in England, the gable-headed coif found more favour than the round with our countrywomen. Then, however, as now, ladies loved long trains to their gowns; and the men’s shoes had that peculiar broad toe so conspicuously marked in Hans Holbein’s cartoon for a picture of our Henry VIII. belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and exhibited among the National Portraits on loan to the South Kensington Museum, A.D. 1866.