Art History Through a Jewish Lens: Esther — From Ahasuerus to the Ayatollahs
A virtual lecture tracing artistic depictions of the biblical Esther narrative across centuries, from ancient Persia to modern geopolitical imagery.
Why we picked this
Tracing a single biblical figure through centuries of painting, illumination, and political imagery reveals how art absorbs and reshapes the stories a culture tells itself.
This virtual lecture follows the figure of Esther across centuries of visual art — from medieval manuscript illumination through Renaissance painting to modern political imagery. The biblical narrative of a Jewish queen in a Persian court has been reinterpreted by every era that touched it, and the artwork reflects each period’s anxieties about power, gender, and diaspora survival.
The “Ahasuerus to the Ayatollahs” subtitle signals the lecture’s range: it connects ancient Persia to contemporary Iran, tracing how the Esther story has been mobilized for different political purposes across time. For anyone interested in how religious narratives live inside visual culture — and how those images do political work — this is a carefully constructed case study.
Free and virtual.