22/08/2026
EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT: The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
August 6, 2026 - January 18, 2027
The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt illuminates how the ancient story of a Jewish heroine became a source of inspiration for people across faiths in the 17th-century Netherlands.
The biblical book of Esther, read annually on the Jewish holiday of Purim, tells the story of how an orphan became a queen and how a queen saved her people. Plucked from obscurity for her beauty and chosen as the new wife of Persian monarch Ahasuerus, Esther hid her Jewish identity until she had no choice but to risk her life and reveal her origins in order to rescue her people from destruction. But how did an ancient Jewish heroine become a symbol of national identity in the Christian Netherlands of the 1600s?
The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt explores how this story was a source of cross-cultural inspiration for Jewish and Protestant communities in the nascent Dutch Republic. Once freed of Spanish Catholic oppression, the Netherlands was a flourishing center of global trade and cultural exchange. Its cosmopolitan capital, Amsterdam, was home to artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) as well as Jewish immigrants who were his neighbors and models.
The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt is the first major exhibition of 17th-century Dutch art at the Gardner. Through an array of Dutch paintings, tapestries, decorative arts, as well as Persian textiles and Jewish ceremonial objects, the exhibition shines light on the ways in which one heroine’s bravery has inspired people across time and faiths.
Image: Jan Lievens, The Feast of Esther, about 1625. Oil on canvas, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
More information: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/esther?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=ex_esther&fbclid=IwY2xjawTkEgBwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7kKs-gI8suG8_sAgf7r3SFz0EJvSqBEBDagqO19p1MfQx-v8D_mFWe7d7a2A_aem_q60UyqXJleRibocva_RqkA
