Illuminated Esther scroll. [Probably Italy, second half of the 18th century].

Ink on parchment.

Esther scroll, inscribed on three parchment membranes sewn together, 10 columns of text, 25-30 lines per column. Tagim (decorative "crownlets") over designated letters.

This Esther scroll is richly illuminated in the margins with illustrations in a naïve, folk-art style, with a recurring pattern. Specifically, each column of text is flanked on the right and left by large human figures, dressed in contemporary costume, representing characters from the Book of Esther, surmounted by large, fancy pitchers filled with plants and fruit, and labeled below with the characters’ names in square-script Hebrew letters. Beneath these figures are large oval medallions bearing heraldic, langued lions encircled by vegetal patterns.

Illustrations

The large human figures are depicted in royal dress, and are shown wearing fancy robes, crowns, tarbooshes, or ceremonial hats, and holding scepters, swords or a scroll; these figures represent King Ahasueres, Queen Vashti, Mordechai, Esther, Haman, and Zeresh, followed by the seven ministers of Persia and Media (mentioned in the Book of Esther, 1:14): Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan. The characters represented by the bust-profiles in the upper medallions are King Ahasueres’s chamberlains, whose names appear throughout the Book of Esther, mostly in the first two chapters; these include Mehuman, Biztha, Abagtha, Zethar, Carcas, Bigthan, Teresh, Hatach, Hegai, and Shaashgaz.

The illustrations in the lower frames present scenes from the narrative, along with brief Hebrew captions:

1. "Then [the king] made a great feast" (Esther 2:18) – Ahasueres’s feast.

2. "[what] was decreed against her" – the beheading of Queen Vashti (according to the Midrash).

3. "[talents of] silver I will pay" (ibid., 3:9) – employees bringing quantities of silver to the king.

4. "…could not the king sleep" – (ibid., 6:1).

5. "and proclaimed before him" (ibid., 6:11) – Haman leading Mordechai on horseback, as Haman’s daughter spills waste water from a bedpan upon his head (according to the Midrash).

6. "So they hanged Haman" (ibid., 7:10).

7. "And the Jews smote…" (ibid., 9:5) – the Jews fighting and defeating their enemies.

8. "…they hanged Haman’s ten sons" (ibid., 9:14) – Haman’s sons hanged, on the gallows.

9. "the celebration of Purim" (with musicians performing).

10. "And then Esther… wrote down…" (ibid., 9:29) – Esther and Mordechai writing the Purim letter.

Comparisons and Sources

The artwork adorning this Esther scroll is based on a group of hand-illustrated Esther scrolls created by Aryeh Leib ben Daniel of Goraj (Goraj, Poland) in the 1840s and 1850s. Aryeh Leib, a highly talented and prolific artist-scribe, was active over a period of many years in Italy, where he evidently produced dozens of illustrated Esther scrolls, many of them bearing a colophon in which he gives his full name, "Aryeh Leib ben Daniel", and gives his place of origin (in Hebrew/Yiddish) as "Goraya, Lesser Poland", in reference to Goraj, a small town/village in southeastern Poland. For the most part, Aryeh Leib based his illustrative and decorative artwork on earlier Esther scrolls, including scrolls bearing engravings created by Salom Italia (a.k.a. Salomo d'Italia, ca. 1619 – ca. 1655) of the Netherlands (roughly a century earlier), as well as other scrolls adorned with Dutch engravings dating from the first half of the 18th century. The fact that a relatively large number Aryeh Leib’s scrolls have survived is proof of the impact and popularity of his output in his active years. Apparently, this popularity spread even more in subsequent years, judging from the ever-greater demand for Esther scrolls of this genre, and from the consequent success of numerous epigones who, inspired by the work of Aryeh Leib, produced scrolls with clearly similar themes and motifs.

Esther scrolls made or inspired by Aryeh Leib of Goraj can be found today in significant numbers both in museum collections and private collections. A scroll resembling the present one, similarly created after Aryeh Leib, appears in the collection of the Umberto Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art, Jerusalem (item no. ON 0069; Center for Jewish Art [CJA], Hebrew University of Jerusalem, item no. 39458).

Height of Parchment: 17.5 cm. Length of scroll: 178 cm. Overall good condition. Creases, mostly to beginning of first sheet, with minor damage to text and illustrations. Faded ink, with minor effects on illustrations and text. Several small holes to second sheet, mended, with reparative completion of a few words.