Susanna and the Elders

Rembrandt’s painting of the chaste Susanna is among his most important works in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. The subject is taken from the Old Testament, which reports that a rich man named Joakim lived in Babylon with his beautiful, godly wife Susanna. Two old, respected judges who are visitors to his house ardently desire Susanna, and finally lie in wait when she is bathing. Just as Susanna sends away her maids, the two old men emerge from their hiding place and importune her to let them have their way with her. They threaten to accuse her of adultery with a young man if she refuses. Susanna realises the hopelessness of her situation: if she consents, she commits a sin against God, but if she denies them, she faces a sentence of death. However, she stands firm, refuses and shouts out. The two old men also call out loudly and declare that they have surprised Susanna in the act of committing adultery. At this, she is put on trial and condemned to death. As she is being led to her execution, the young Daniel by divine inspiration realises that she is innocent and reveals the guilt of the judges, who are executed instead of Susanna. Rembrandt captured the scene at its dramatic climax. Susanna has taken off her robe and is about to enter the water when the two old men take her by surprise.One judge has approached her from behind and grabbed the cloth around her waist with which she is trying to cover her nakedness, while the second comes through a garden gate and eyes her body with a lustful gaze.For the execution of this remarkable painting, a total of three attempts were necessary before Rembrandt completed it in 1647. The laborious process of painting it, which was probably drawn out over more than twelve years, was accompanied by a lively exchange of ideas within the studio. An astonishingly large number of drawings and studies in oil demonstrate the intensity with which the master and his pupils explored the theme. It is evident that Rembrandt at first closely followed the example of his teacher Pieter Lastman (fig. left). For his painting of Susanna, Rembrandt was guided by Pieter Lastman’s composition, but handled the theme with increased psychological insight by making the beholder an immediate witness to Susanna’s hopeless situation.In the first version of the painting, probably begun in 1635, a sky that was originally radiant blue extended far down. On the garden wall was a peacock, facing right, and to the left of it Susanna’s two maidservants could be seen. Vegetation was visible on the ground and projecting into the scene from the right. Susanna’s face, as she looked behind her with a slightly open mouth, was at first directly based on Lastman’s model and faced the viewer full-on. She was wearing pearl earrings, and her hair tumbled down at the side. Her discarded robe was coloured blue-white in this version and had a blue sash. The figure of the old man behind Susanna, too, took a different form originally. His outstretched left arm is thought to have extended higher, so that he may have grasped Susanna’s shoulder.For the second version, Rembrandt added in the background the tower-like architecture, in front of which stood a tall tree. In addition to this, a swan with flapping wings and two smaller waterfowl were placed on the water. Susanna’s head was turned, looking out of the picture in three-quarter profile. At the same time Rembrandt arranged her left hand, still closely held to her body in the first version, in a more horizontal position so that her upper arm pointed almost vertically downwards, further away from her body. To match this, an alteration was made to the old man behind Susanna so that he now directly reached through beneath her arm to touch her breast. Susanna’s robe, too, was changed: Rembrandt overpainted the fabric in yellow and gave it a wider sash in red. At the same time, the motif of Susanna’s red slippers placed on flat ground was added on the right.For the third and final version of the painting, Rembrandt reduced the size of the tall tree in front of the palace like building and gave the sky a cool grey colour. He removed the startled swan and the two waterfowl, and inserted a shell-shaped cavity into the rock right behind Susanna. Beneath Susanna’s cast-off robe, Rembrandt added a stone step, so that the slippers now stood precariously on the edge. He also devoted himself once more to the figure of Susanna, in an extremely fundamental way. Her left arm was again pressed close to her body in a protective gesture. Her left leg was bent more, so that her raised foot now rested on the curved step of the pool of water. Rembrandt also altered her discarded robe once again by overpainting it in red varnish. The old man behind Susanna, too, was amended once more. His left arm was drawn back so that he now takes hold of the cloth around her waist with his left hand and pulls it from her body. Finally, Rembrandt made the wholepicture darker. In this condition, he signed and dated his painting on the newly added step below Susanna’s robe.A reproduction engraving by Richard Earlom of 1769 based on the work now in Berlin records the version of the painting that Rembrandt left to posterity in 1647 (fig. right). A comparison quickly reveals that extensive alterations were undertaken again after 1769. Most astonishingly, far-reaching, previously unidentified changes to the work were made in the 18th century, in all probability by Sir Joshua Reynolds when it was in his possession between 1769 and 1792. Reynolds not only eliminated various details that were visible on the mezzotint, but also intervened in the work thoroughly in other ways. In places, he completely removed Rembrandt’s originally visible painting and then newly painted these areas. In other places, he made the existing layers of paint thinner before overpainting them. In a few small areas, he removed the upper layers of paint only in order to gain insights into the picture by uncovering painted layers in various places. Finally, he coated a large surface of the work with thin, green-brown paint, thus changing the originally cool colouring of the scene. As the work remains in an excellent condition to this day, there can have been no need for restoration in the 18th century. It may therefore be assumed that these alterations must have been a kind of “improvement” rather than a restoration. Katja Kleinert und Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019