Susanna and the Elders

The painting to look at

The National Gallery’s 2020 loan record (immunity-from-seizure report) for its Artemisia exhibition records Artemisia Gentileschi’s 1610 Susanna and the Elders in the Schönborn collection at Pommersfelden. It is an oil painting on canvas.^[1] Start with the stone ledge behind the seated woman. Both men lean across it from above, while her head inclines towards the viewer’s left. One forearm rises beside her face; her other arm extends towards the viewer’s right. In the biblical story, the elders threaten Susanna with a false accusation unless she submits to them.^[2] Look first at the distances the painting gives each figure. The confrontation becomes legible through their positions before the rest of the narrative is explained.

The ledge and the hands

The ledge divides the upper group from the seated figure, but it does not leave much space between them. The men’s heads sit close together. One wears red; the other bends towards him. Below, Susanna’s head inclines towards the viewer’s left. Compare the grouping above the ledge with the position of her head.

Follow the arms rather than starting with the faces. One forearm rises beside Susanna’s face. Her other arm extends towards the right, with the fingers open. The red-clad man holds a finger near his mouth.

Katy Hessel describes Gentileschi’s treatment as taking Susanna’s viewpoint rather than the men’s. She draws attention to the way the men lean over the division that should separate them from Susanna.^[3] That interpretation offers a useful second look: return to the whole image and examine how much room Susanna appears to have beneath the men. Open the whole image to keep the stone steps and her seated pose in view, rather than judging the arrangement from a head detail alone.

What happens in the story

In Daniel 13 in the USCCB text, Susanna is married to Joakim. Two elders who serve as judges watch her in the garden. When her attendants leave, the men demand that she yield to them, threatening to say they found her with another man if she refuses.^[2]

She refuses. Their false account is believed and she is condemned. Daniel intervenes and questions the men separately. Their descriptions of the tree under which they claim to have witnessed the encounter disagree, exposing their testimony; Susanna is cleared.^[2]

Read the confrontation in the painting against that sequence. In the text, Daniel’s questioning follows the confrontation and false testimony.^[2] Knowing the ending changes how a viewer may understand the scene, but it should not encourage us to invent signs of the later courtroom episode in the painted gestures.

Before the assault and trial

Hessel describes the picture as signed and dated in 1610, when Gentileschi was seventeen. She dates the artist’s assault by Agostino Tassi to 1611 and the conclusion of the subsequent trial to 1612.^[3] On those dates, the painting came before the assault.

Hessel proposes a connection between the work and the conditions facing women in seventeenth-century Italy, while explicitly identifying that suggestion as speculation.^[3] Return to the grouping and consider how much space Susanna has beneath the men.

Another Susanna with a separate history

A separate work of the same subject is now in the Royal Collection, identified as RCIN 402702. The Royal Collection’s conservation account describes research tracing dispersed royal paintings and connects this work with the artist’s time in London in the late 1630s. It is a separate painting.^[4]

Use the collection’s account to explore that object’s attribution and conservation history. Those findings do not describe the surface of the 1610 Pommersfelden canvas. A shared title is the beginning of a comparison, not proof that the two pictures have the same date, collection or physical history.

Collection and a visit

The National Gallery’s 2020 loan record places the 1610 painting with Benedetto Luti by 1715 and in the Schönborn collection at Schloss Weissenstein by 1719.^[1]

Schloss Weissenstein’s collection overview describes visits to its collection.^[5] It does not confirm that this particular painting is currently on display. Check the visitor information and ask the collection about the work before planning a visit around it.