Pompeo Batoni was the dean of painting in eighteenth-century Rome, the most serious link in that city, then still the artistic center of Europe, with the ancients, the masters of the High Renaissance, and the more classical side of the Baroque. Although his reputation today depends on his grand and stylish portraits, it was his ability as a narrative painter within the Roman classical tradition that drew young artists to Batoni's studio. Esther before Ahasuerus is a splendid example of Batoni's use of discretion and restraint in both color and expression to describe an event. According to the Old Testament, it was forbidden by penalty of death to enter unsummoned the presence of Ahasuerus, king of the Medes and Persians. But his wife Esther, seeking his aid in thwarting the plot to destroy her own people, the Jews, defies the royal order and enters the throne room dressed in her finest robes. First stunned, and then overwhelmed by her beauty and heroism, the king forgives her by lowering his scepter and later will join her in destroying her enemy Haman. Joseph J. Rishel, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 182.