The Banquet of Ahasuerus
Jacopo da Sellaio·1490
Historical Context
The Banquet of Ahasuerus of around 1490, now in the Uffizi Gallery, depicts a scene from the Book of Esther — the Persian king's great feast — a subject that provided Sellaio scope for a horizontal frieze composition featuring elaborately costumed courtly figures. The Esther story, in which the Jewish queen saves her people from persecution through intercession with her husband, was read in Christian typology as a prefiguration of the Virgin's intercession; it also appealed to the narrative taste of late fifteenth-century Florentine patrons who commissioned spalliera and cassone paintings with secular biblical subjects for the decoration of their households.
Technical Analysis
The frieze-like horizontal composition places multiple elaborately costumed figures across the picture plane in a format derived from cassone panel painting, where narrative is conveyed through lateral sequence rather than deep spatial recession. Sellaio handles the courtly textiles with careful decorative attention, using pattern and colour to differentiate the assembled figures of the feast.
