While Esther is featured in the art of other countries, it is the 16th century Dutch geopolitical background, along with the subsequent Jewish immigration to Amsterdam, that give rise to the scale and range of her appearances as she evolved into a symbol for the Protestant Dutch nation and their fight for freedom against Catholic Spain.
In 1566, tensions grew between Spain and their Spanish Netherlands territory, resulting in a series of iconoclastic riots that sparked the Eighty Years' War. “Angry Protestants take out their frustrations by removing pictures and sculptures– images from cathedrals– as a symbol of the differences between Catholics and Protestants,” explains Frederick, because Protestants considered the use of images for worship as bordering on idolatry.