Susannah and the Elders

Guercino, 1649–1650

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Artist: Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666)
Medium: Red chalk
Size: 30.5 × 33.2 cm (12 × 13 1/16 in.)
Culture: Italian
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Susannah, seated in a garden setting and preparing to bathe, turns in surprise to find two elderly men close behind her. The biblical story (Apocrypha, Daniel: 13) tells how two Elders of the community attempted to blackmail Susannah into sleeping with them by threatening to falsely testify against her. They indeed did so when she called for help, and she was subsequently sentenced to death. When the Elders were questioned separately their accounts differed, their plan was discovered, and they instead met this fate themselves. This red chalk drawing is a finished study for Guercino’s oil Susannah and the Elders (1650) now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Parma.

Famed for his depiction of the psychological intensity of a scene, Guercino here captures the moment when Susannah is startled by the presence of the two lascivious men and moves to cover herself, while one of them takes hold of her drapery to undress her further. Their eyes lock in confrontation. The drawing demonstrates the artist’s exceptional abilities in the red chalk medium, used—with stumping and rubbing—to convey effectively the different textures in the scene (stone, water, hair, skin, drapery) as well as the dynamic fall of light and shade.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.