ARTSY
By lina Cohen
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| Frans Franken II, King Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba, ca. 1620–29. Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum. |
Simple and stark, the biblical tale of the Queen of Sheba has launched innumerable, sumptuous artworks. The queen first appears as a visitor to King Solomon’s Jerusalem court in the Old Testament’s Books of Kings. It’s hardly the most lurid story in the Bible; no one dies, commits adultery, or suffers a plague. Yet over millennia, this unadorned narrative has undergone myriad transformations that alternately reinvent the Queen of Sheba as a converted heathen, the founder of a nation, and a magical being. Three major religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—spanning Asia, Europe, and Africa have claimed her as their own in vastly different literary and artistic representations. [
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| AAttributed to Ira, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba page in folio from an illustrated manuscript, early 19th century. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
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| laude Lorrain
Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648
National Gallery, London |
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| The Queen of Sheba Meeting King Solomon, Ethiopia, mid-20th century. Courtesy of The Walters Art Museum. |
