For Doré it was important be historical as exact as possible. So he drew a kind of exotic palace and costumes which could pass as Persian. But if you look at how theatrically Esther is losing her consciousness, it could only be on a stage. So it’s theatre in a good setting what Doré is showing.
I had never seen this work before but the story of Esther seems like a natural choice for Doré, as most of his work was very theatrical.
ReplyDeleteDoré illustrated the whole Bible and so there are a lot of images. A good resource is:
ReplyDeletehttp://catholic-resources.org/Art/Dore-OT.htm
Interesting is also that Doré produced mass products, a kind of "pre comics". Some art historians call him even the "industrialized romantican".
But I like his art, maybe because of that.