Esther Before Ahasuerus – Caspar Van Den Hoecke (c. 1585 – 1648)

Oil on oak panel. Antwerp School of the first half of the 17th century, attributed to Caspar van den Hoecke.
Inspired by an episode from the Old Testament, our composition represents Esther's plea to her husband Ahasuerus, king of the Persians, also known by the Greek name of Xerxes. Esther and her people are indeed threatened by an edict from Minister Aman condemning the Jews to death. Etiquette, however, forbade the queen to appear before the king unannounced. Defying this ban, Esther faints under the influence of emotion after having begged Ahasuerus to cancel the decree. Magnanimous, the latter forgives his wife with a gesture of his scepter and agrees to spare his people. It is the author of the decree, Aman, who ends up hanging from a gallows that we see in the background of our painting. If the Jews commemorate Esther during the feast of Purim, the Christians see in her a prefiguration of the Virgin. Indeed, her intervention with the king prefigures Mary's intercession with Christ on the day of the Last Judgment: Esther had obtained the grace of the Jews, the Virgin will obtain the salvation of the human race. Highlighting religious tolerance, this theme was particularly topical in the Grand Siècle, when society was plagued by religious quarrels. This work full of pathos, painted in thin glazes, is representative of the Antwerp Baroque style initiated by Peter Paul Rubens and brilliantly represented here by one of his emulators, Caspar van den Hoecke. This deployment of characters in a palatial architecture in a horizontal order recalls the compositions of Paul Veronese, who represented this episode around 1555 (Uffizi Museum in Florence). Peter Paul Rubens was probably inspired by the Venetian master for his own interpretation of the subject, which has now disappeared, but whose memory we preserve thanks to an engraving dated 1631. Like Rubens, van den Hoecke restores the emotion of the characters by an expressive treatment of faces and subtle hand games. However, not neglecting the details, he pays great attention to the creation of fabrics and textures, whose volumes are restored by fine touches. Thus, this work is a synthesis between Ruben's vivacity and the attention to detail that so animated the Flemish painters throughout the Golden Age.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna preserves another version of this composition by van den Hoecke whose dimensions (54 x 77 cm), staging and color palette differ somewhat: the painting in Vienna appears to be little open to the exterior, while ours presents a courtyard lined with trees where a crowd is agitated. Also, in our version, rather than a window through which the spectator attends a meal, van den Hoecke offers our gaze the perspective of the facade of the palace.

Our painting is underlined by a powerful inverted profile frame in burl veneer and black guilloché.
Dimensions: 44 x 59.5 cm – 68 x 83 cm with the frame

Biography: Caspar or Gaspar van den Hoecke (Antwerp, c. 1585 – Id. after 1648) began his apprenticeship with Juliaan Teniers in Antwerp in 1595. Become a member of the guild of Saint Luke in 1603, he trained many apprentices, including his two sons, Jan and Robert van den Hoecke. His corpus is mainly made up of religious paintings.

Bibliography: D'HULST, R. -A., VANDENVEN, M., Corpus Rubenanium Ludwig Bruchard: The Old Testament (part III), London, Harvey Miller, 1968. MARTIN, John Rupert, Corpus Rubenanium Ludwig Bruchard: The ceiling paintings for the jesuit church in Antwerp (part I), London, Harvey Miller, 1967. REAU, Louis, Iconography of Christian Art, Paris, PUF, 1957. VLIEGHE, Hans, Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585-1700, New Haven , Yale University Press, 1998, p. 109.