Belshazzar s Feast

This feast is an explicitly pagan celebration. When it is inter-rupted by a terrifying manifestation of Cod, its sacrilegious nature is laid bare.

Belshazzar s Feast

In the 6th century B.C., Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, was king of Babylon. One day he invited his lords to a formal ban­quet. As the wine flowed, he ordered that gold and silver drink­ing vessels that his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem be brought in for his guests, wives, and concubines. As they were imbibing wine from these precious vessels and praising the pagan gods, a disembodied hand appeared and wrote words in a myste­rious language on the wall of the banquet hall. The terrified king sought someone who could decipher the mysterious writing. The queen recalled the name of Daniel, a wise man who had lived in the kingdom since the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel was offered great power and riches if he could decipher the message on the wall. The prophet rejected the bribe but nevertheless deci­phered the disquieting message. He reminded the king that his severe, arrogant father, Nebuchadnezzar, had been ignominiously deposed, and he rebuked Belshazzar for sacrilegiously drinking from the vessels from the house of God and worshipping pagan gods instead of God Almighty. Consequently, said Daniel, God was using this written message to announce the end of the king's reign, that he had been judged and found wanting, and that his kingdom would be divided between the Medes and Persians. That same night Belshazzar was killed, and Darius the Persian took over his kingdom.

Sources
Daniel 5:1-30

Iconography

This subject is treated only rarely in art, though it had a vogue in Italian and Flemish painting of the 1 6th and 17th centuries. It offered artists the chance to deploy the theatrical style of contemporary painting to create the uncanny atmosphere of a historical miracle

Tintoretto, Belshazzar's Feast, ca. 1541-42. Verona, Castelvecchio