AN IMPORTANT ESTHER SCROLL, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY ARYEH LEIB BEN DANIEL OF GORAY, ITALY, CIRCA 1740

An Exceptional Illustrated Esther Scroll by the Master Scribe-Artist Aryeh Leib ben Daniel of Goray

Among the handful of eighteenth-century scribe-artists whose identities and oeuvres can be reconstructed with confidence, Aryeh Leib ben Daniel of Goray occupies a singular position. One of the most prolific and stylistically distinctive creators of illustrated megillot, his surviving signed works—twelve in total, produced between 1732 and 1755—provide an unusually detailed roadmap of an artist’s evolving hand, movements, and patrons. Through these inscriptions, we follow his journey from the small town of Goraj near Zamość, across Eastern and Central Europe, and ultimately into the artistic milieu of northern Italy, where his mature style fully emerged.

Aryeh Leib’s earliest known scrolls, executed in provincial communities in Poland and Germany during the 1730s, already reveal a meticulous draftsmanship and a strong narrative instinct. Yet it was only after his immigration to Italy in the early 1740s that he developed the refined aesthetic for which he is best known: elegant sepia line drawings, disciplined compositions, and a harmonious fusion of text and image. His sojourn in Brescello in 1744–45—living in the home of Solomon Cases, a scion of the renowned Mantuan rabbinic family—proved especially formative. From there, and later in Venice (1746–48), he created a series of richly illustrated scrolls that mark the height of his artistic achievement. In addition to twelve signed megillot, more than twenty-five unsigned examples are attributed to his hand, along with nine scrolls for which he served solely as scribe, copying the text to accompany borders engraved by Francesco Griselini, one of the leading Italian engravers of the period.

The present scroll exemplifies Aryeh Leib’s fully mature style and stands among the most accomplished of his Italian works. Executed in pen and brown ink, the megillah is lavishly ornamented throughout with a sophisticated architectural program of upper, central, and lower registers.

• The upper margins are adorned with medallions containing bust-length portraits of the king’s advisers, chamberlains, and guardians of the harem—each meticulously labeled in a semi-cursive Hebrew hand. These medallions are interwoven with vases, scrolling plants, and delicately rendered pairs of birds.

• The text panels, set within rectangular frames, are flanked by full-length figures of the principal characters of the Esther narrative, as well as the princes of Media and Persia, again identified by Hebrew inscriptions.

• The lower margins feature a sequence of roundels illustrating key episodes of the Purim story, accompanied by descriptive captions and flanked by animated lions.

The scenes from the Purim tale are imaginatively drawn within roundels beneath each column of text. They appear as follows:

1. The feast of Ahasuerus.

2. The execution of Vashti (based on the midrash).

3. The hanging of Bigthan and Teresh.

4. The king's servants bow down to Haman as Mordecai sits in the city gate.

5. Haman weighing the silver coins and presenting them to Ahasuerus.

6. King Ahasuerus lying in bed, listening to the reading of his book of records.

7. Haman parading Mordecai through the streets of Shushan on horseback while Haman's daughter empties a chamber pot on her father’s head from an open window (based on the midrash).

8. The hanging of Haman.

9. The Jews defeat their enemies.

10. The hanging of the ten sons of Haman on the gallows.

11. The Jews dancing and celebrating their redemption, accompanied by musicians.

12. Mordecai and Esther writing a letter instructing the Jewish people to observe the holiday of Purim.

Across the entire scroll, Aryeh Leib enriches the interstices between these major elements with a dense tapestry of leafy tendrils, blossoms, and fruit clusters set against an imitation cross-hatched ground. The effect is one of rhythmic visual abundance, yet the composition remains balanced and highly legible—a hallmark of the artist’s disciplined approach.

One feature of particular note is the scribe’s consistent practice of beginning most columns of text with the word ha-melekh (“the king”). While referring to King Ahasuerus, this choice also alludes to God, the “King of Kings," whose name does not explicitly appear in the text. By arranging the text in this fashion, the skilled scribe could allude to the hidden Divine presence in the Book of Esther.

With twelve known signed illustrated scrolls and approximately twenty-five additional examples attributed to him, Aryeh Leib ben Daniel of Goray represents one of the most fully documented and artistically influential scribe-artists of the eighteenth century. The present megillah—radiant with expressive linework, narrative complexity, and decorative richness—belongs among the finest of his surviving works. Its technical mastery places it among the most significant Esther scrolls to appear on the market in decades, offering collectors a rare opportunity to acquire a masterpiece by one of the premier scribe-artists of the early modern Jewish world.

PYHISICAL DESCRIPTION

Ink on parchment, (9.5 x 42 ½  in.; 240 x 1080 mm), 3 membranes, text penned in in eighteenth-century square Hebrew script in 12 columns with twenty-nine lines per column, decorated throughout,

written

PROVENANCE

Owned by Rabbi Max Moses Friediger (1884-1947) Chief Rabbi of Denmark, purchased by him in the 1920s and then by descent within the family.

LITERATURE

Dagmara Budzioch, The Decorated Esther Scrolls from the Museum of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and the Tradition of Megillot Esther Decoration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Warsaw: 2019, 1:206-215 (in Polish).

Olga Sixtova, O svitku / Form of the Scroll [katalog k výstavě konané v Galerii Roberta Guttmanna Židovského muzea v Praze od 22. června do 26. července 2006], Prague 2006, 32-33.

A Journey through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books, eds. Evelyn M. Cohen, Emile Schrijver, Sharon Liberman Mintz, Amsterdam 2009, 246-249.