Obj. ID: 37870
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts  JML Illustrated Esther Scroll with a Cartouche, Italy, 18th century

Hand-painted scroll whose decorative scheme is partly based on the group of popular scrolls that the scholar Mendel Metzger named Gaster II after the collector Moses Gaster (1856–1939) who possessed one of such manuscripts (currently the scroll Gaster Hebrew MS 711, John Rylands Library, Manchester; see Metzger, The Earliest…, esp. 403). This megillah opens with a rectangular frame formed of a tendril and flowers that encloses a flower-filled vase. It is followed by a cartouche that includes a coat of arms with an eight-pointed star and three flowers (possibly roses) or two different family emblems may be merged here. The upper margins are adorned with a wavy line decorated with floral motifs resembling the palmettes. Their sections are separated by vases filled with plants placed directly above the twisted columns interspacing the double text panels (the text columns inscribed in them are separated by a wide line). The lower margins are covered with the narrative cycle whose scenes are framed in rectangles (their width is equal either to the width of a single text column or a double text panel) that are separated by bases of twisted columns. The episodes from the Book of Esther are painted schematically, especially the human figures present in them are merely sketched, therefore several scenes cannot be interpreted unequivocally. The final membrane is adorned with floral decoration. The style of drawings and the color scheme of the last four scenes differ from these prevailing in the scroll suggesting that the last membrane is a later addition.