Susanna and the Elders in art

Susanna Crystal c.900 CE

The Susanna Crystal, also known as the Lothair Crystal, a 9th-century engraved rock crystal in a gilded copper frame made in the Lotharingia region of northwest Europe in the mid-9th century and which is now in the British Museum, depicts in several vignettes the story of Susanna from the Old Testament book of Daniel.[4] Inscriptions from the Vulgate accompany each vignette.[5] The vignettes are rendered in the Rheims figural style.[5]

Portrayals in paintings through the end of the 18th century, with few departures, tend to portray Susanna as making little protest and sometimes seeming to appear acquiescent.[1]^: 150

During the Renaissance period there was an increased interest in and production of nudes, which had fallen out of interest during the Middle Ages. Production of paintings featuring naked women increased. Typical representations show Susanna protesting being watched mildly or not at all.[1]^: 150 Portrayals of the scene during this period typically emphasized the elders' point of view—the voyeurism they enjoyed, their anticipation of sex—and did not address Susanna's distress except to occasionally picture her with her eyes cast to heaven in a plea for help.[1]^: 6–7 Norma Broude called these and the similar depictions in Renaissance art blatant distortions of the biblical Susanna.[1]^: 7

• 
  1492–1494 Pinturicchio
• 
  c.1500 Master of Apollo and Daphne
• 
  1517 Lorenzo Lotto
• 
  c.1540–1560 Jan Matsys
• 
  1555 Tintoretto
• 
  1561 Alessandro Allori
• 
  1590 Annibale Carracci
• 
  1598 Ludovico Carracci
• 
  1599 Cornelis van Haarlem

Treatments in the Baroque period were more likely to emphasize the point of view of Susanna, who is uncomfortable with or objects to being watched, while others continued to concentrate on the male gaze. In 17th-century portrayals, combining Susanna's rejection of the men's advances while gazing toward heaven became common, although in the biblical passage, she does not cast her eyes to heaven until after they have publicly accused her of adultery.[6]^{: 358, 424}

• 
  1607 Rubens
• 
  1643 by Massimo Stanzione
• 
  1649 Artemisia Gentileschi
• 
  c.1700–1727 by Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari
• 
  1650 Guercino

Modern representations depict Susanna as either alone, unaware of being watched, or uncomfortable with it. By the mid 19th century, portrayals often did not include the elders, and the only spectator was the viewer of the painting.[1]

• 
  1810 Pierre Van Hanselaere
• 
  1822 Pyotr Basin
• 
  1850 Francesco Hayez
• 
  1860 Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld
• 
  1862 Juan Manuel Blanes
• 
  c.1908 Max Fuhrmann der Ältere

• 
  c. 1550–1560
• 
  c.1552–1555
• 
  c. 1555
• 
  c.1580s

Rubens in his late 1630s portrayal places Susanna under an apple tree rather than a mastic or oak, a nod to Eve, the garden of Eden, and resisting, according to Mark Leach, "supreme temptation"; according to Garrard, the implication by both Leach and Rubens is that Susanna had to be very strong-willed indeed to resist the overwhelming attraction of being coerced into sex by two elderly lechers.[1]^: 152 In 1886 Max Rooses called the Rubens depictions a "gallant enterprise mounted by two bold adventurers", which Garard called an example of a "remarkable testament to the indomitable male ego."[1]^: 150

• 
  1607
• 
  c.1609–1610
• 
  1611
• 
  1614
• 
  c. 1636–1639
• 
  (unknown date)

Artemisia Gentileschi produced her first portrayal in 1610 when she was seventeen years old.[6]^: 298 The painting is considered one of the earliest to portray Susanna as clearly distressed at being watched; according to Christiansen and Mann, "no other artist had interpreted the psychological dimension" of the story.[6]^: 296 According to Mary Garrard, the painting used an explicitly feminine point of view[7] and provided an "unorthodox interpretation" of the scene, calling out Garrard's surprise that until she did so in 1982, no attention had been paid by art scholars to that unorthodoxy.[1]^{: 147–148} Garrard notes the similarity in composition to that of the 1590 Annibale Carracci but points out the vastly different feeling; Carracci's Susanna appears to be "sexually available and responsive" while Gentileschi's is clearly distressed.[1]^: 148 Carracci's lushly planted garden is replaced by a stark stone bench and balustrade.[1]^{: 148–149} The painting communicates Susanna's unhappiness rather than focussing on the sexual pleasure the elders are coercing her for.[1]^: 149 It is unique in that the two elders are shown whispering to one another, emphasizing the plot between them.[1]^: 163 Garrard wrote that "in no other version of the subject known to me are the Elders shown whispering to one another".[10]

Artemisia Gentileschi,1622

In early 1611, Gentileschi was raped by Agostino Tassi, whom her father, Orazio Gentileschi, had hired to teach Artemisia, and a second man, Cosimo Quorli.[1]^{: 162–163}[10] In Tassi's ensuing trial, Artemisia was subjected to thumbscrew, Tassi was convicted but his conviction later overturned, and Gentileschi's reputation was ruined.[1]^: 163 During the trial she testified that Tassi and Quorli pressured her for sex, accusing her of already having had sex with a servant, a further similarity to Susanna's story.[1]^: 165 Garrard has speculated that Gentileschi may have already been receiving unwanted attention from Tassi during the period she painted the 1610 portrayal.[7] She points out that the painting is not about rape but about the threat of rape.[7]^: 165 According to Christiansen and Mann, Gianni Papi identified the elders as having been modeled after Tassi and Orazio.[6]^: 298 Garrard points out that the Elder on the left in her painting is a "thick-haired younger man", which was "highly unusual in Susanna pictures"; Tassi was in his thirties at the time of the rape.[10] Gina Siciliano points out that the elders "bore the dark curls of Agostino Tassi and the balding sleaziness of Cosimo Quorli."[11] In 1612 Gentileschi completed Judith Slaying Holofernes which some scholars and commenters have interpreted as visual revenge.[3][11]

The attribution of the painting and its date have both been challenged, but Garrard's 1982 attribution and dating have since been accepted by most scholars.[6]^: 298 Some believe Orazio must have at least provided guidance.[6]^{: 298–299}

Gentileschi eventually produced at least three more paintings depicting the incident, typically also showing Susanna as clearly distressed, along with one other possibility which has since been lost and may be the work of Gianfranco Loredan.[6]^{: 342, 355, 476} Her second painting, which does not conform to the dramatic style of her other depictions of Susanna, was in the eighteenth century attributed to Gentileschi, in the nineteenth century to Caravaggio, but in 1968 reattributed to Gentileschi, although Garrard has questioned this as recently as 2001 due to the unusual format of the signature[6]^: 355 and because Susana's expression is "sharply out of character for the artist". Christiansen and Mann argue that this may simply be evidence of Gentileschi's adaptability.[6]^: 358 Susana in this portrayal is as described in Apocrypha, which says that "through her tears she looked up toward Heaven"; Christiansen and Mann speculate that the differences in the depiction may have been at the direction of a patron.[6]

Gentileschi's 1649 painting combines two moments in the story, which was common in 17th century portrayals: Susanna's rejection of the men's advances as in the 1610 painting, and the casting of her eyes to heaven as in the 1622.[6]^{: 358, 424} Christiansen and Mann wrote that Gentileschi took "a far more traditional interpretation" of the story than her similarly composed but very different in style and feel 1610 painting.[6]^: 424

• 
  1610
• 
  1649
• 
  1652

Garrard calls Rembrandt's 1647 portrayal one of the more sympathetic to Susanna, portraying her as very young and innocent, but she points out the resemblance to the Venus de Medici, a work considered very sexual in nature because the figure, in attempting to conceal herself, draws attention to herself.[1]^: 154

• 
  1636
• 
  1647

• 
  1904
• 
  1913
• 
  c.1913
• 
  1913