Oh, Susanna: Exploring Artemisiass Most Painted Heroine

Oh,Susanna:ExploringArtemisia’s
MostPaintedHeroine
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Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656?)i was unique among Baroque artists. Not only was
she a woman, she was a woman who eschewed still lifes and whose work extended beyond small
devotional paintings to include the large history paintings considered the height of artistic – and
until then, exclusively male - achievement. Among her many trademarks, Artemisia was known
for creating series of paintings representing variations on a single theme.ii She painted four
“Judith and her Maidservants,” for example, five or six “Penitent Magdalens,” and six
“Bathshebas.”iii Although she prided herself on the originality of each painting, writing to Don
Antonio Ruffo that “ . . . never has anyone found in my pictures any repetition of invention, not
even of one hand,”iv each of these series includes at least one repeated image type (Fig. 1). She
also painted a series of eight “Susanna and the Elders,” of which five are currently known (Fig.
2). Compared to the other series, this one is unique: it contains the largest number of paintings
executed over the longest period of time with no repetition of image types. Although unique, this
series of paintings can be understood in terms of several signature features of Artemisia’s style
and oeuvre: growth and change in her artistic style over time; her practice of portraying heroic
female protagonists; her specialty of painting erotic female nudes; and her narrative originality.
Susanna’s story is told in the Book of Daniel (13:1-64). She was the wife of Joakim, a
wealthy man, and walked in their garden every day at noon. Two elders, who met daily at
Joakim’s house, saw her and lusted after her. They eventually told one another of their desire and
plotted to surprise Susanna while she was alone. Their opportunity came one day when she
decided to bathe in the garden. The elders hid and, after she sent her maids to lock the garden
door and go to the house for supplies, rushed up to her. They told her that she must have sex with
them or they would accuse her of adultery with a fictitious young man. Susanna told them that
she would rather “ . . . fall innocent into (their) power than to sin in the eyes of the Lord” (Dn.
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13:23). She called out for help, the elders followed through with their threat, and Susanna was
brought to trial for adultery. She wasn’t allowed to speak on her own behalf, but called upon God
for justice. The young Daniel, sensing something amiss, questioned the elders separately and
discovered a discrepancy in their story. They were found guilty of lying and stoned to death, and
Susanna was redeemed.
The Susanna story has been a powerful symbol in Christianity at least since the time of
Hippolytus, who saw Susanna as the Church and the Elders as Jews and pagans.v In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Susanna story was enacted as sacred drama for feast days
and special liturgies, and Susanna frequently appeared on Florentine brides’ wedding chests,
possibly as an example to new brides to emulate Susanna’s chaste behavior.vi By the sixteenth
century, representations of Susanna and her story began to change, with Susanna appearing nude
or nearly so, and the prevailing (male) interpretations of her story beginning to focus on either
Susanna as a temptress, enticing the elders with her beauty, or Susanna as a potentially willing
participant in the elders’ scheme, unable to resist her own sexual instincts.vii By the late
Renaissance (and beyond), regardless of any deeper meaning, the story became an excuse to
portray the female nude.viii
Artemisia’s “Susannas” span nearly her entire career. The first, the 1610 Pommersfelden
painting, is her first autograph work and the starkest and most Caravaggesque of the five.ix
Susanna, nude except for a sheet draped across one leg, is seated on a bench backed by a
masonry wall over which the elders loom. The traditional garden setting is missing, and Susanna
twists away from the elders with her face expressing agony and shame. The second painting, the
1622 Burghley House “Susanna,” differs markedly in style and content from the Pommersfelden
painting. Here a more idealized Susanna covers herself more completely and sits at the end of the
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bench and wall, past which a garden is visible. The elders, still positioned close to and above her,
are off to one side and less directly over her than they are in the Pommersfelden painting.x
Artemisia apparently painted another “Susanna” in 1627, but it has been lost; the next painting
we have is the 1636 London “Susanna.”xi The only “Susanna” we know of that includes
significant background architecture, this painting also places Susanna farther from the picture
plane than do the other four. The wall is replaced with an open balustrade, while the elders are
again placed to the side, and somewhat more distant from Susanna than we see in the other
paintings.
Two more lost “Susannas” were painted in the 1630s. The 1649 Brno painting uses the
same balustrade as the London painting, and an extensive landscape – the only one of its kind in
this series – is visible in the background. Susanna’s arms echo those in the Pommersfelden
painting, but her head and body position are different, as is the position of the two elders, who
are more separate from one another than they were in any of the previous paintings. Artemisia
painted her last “Susanna” in 1652, likely no more than four years before her death. Here again
we see the bench and balustrade from the London and Brno paintings, with just a hint of a garden
behind the balustrade. The elders are relatively distant from Susanna and from one another.
Examining these paintings as a series, the viewer must note the obvious differences in
both style and narrative content among them, most notably the differences between the 1610 and
subsequent paintings. The stylistic differences are a function of Artemisia’s growth as an artist at
a time when artistic tastes were changing and diversifying. Broadly speaking, they represent a
shift from her early Caravaggism to a more classical idealism in a Bolognese style. More
specifically, they derive from a variety of influences garnered from her travels and her
interactions within the artistic and literary circles in Florence, Venice, and Naples.
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We see Artemisia’s Caravaggesque roots quite clearly in the Pommersfelden “Susanna,”
with its figures pressed close to the frontal plane, strong chiaroscuro, minimal background, and
harsh realism. In 1612 or 1613 she traveled to Florence, returning to Rome in 1620. By the time
she painted the 1622 Burghley House “Susanna,” her paintings revealed such Florentine
practices as greater idealism, highly polished surfaces, and more sophisticated colorism.xii We
still see some traces of her early Caravaggism in this work: the figures are still pressed close to
the picture plane and Artemisia uses a strong chiaroscuro to heighten the drama of the narrative.
Susanna is much more idealized, however, and new classical elements have been added to the
background, demonstrating not only a Florentine but also a Bolognese influence, likely because
the work was painted for the Bolognese Ludovisi family.xiii
Following a six-year stay in Rome, Artemisia traveled to Venice, where she lived for
three years, then moved to Naples, where she lived from 1630-1639 and again from 1642 until
her death. Throughout this time – the rest of her career – Artemisia’s work continued to show a
trend toward increasing idealism and classicism. In addition to a general shift in taste away from
Caravaggism, Artemisia was influenced, as early as the late 1620s, by the very specific
preferences of two important groups: her Spanish and Neapolitan patrons. Spanish patrons, in
particular, expected female painters to produce soft, lyrical, and seductive works, and Artemisia
was able to adapt a style already tending in that direction to meet those expectations.xiv
Neapolitan painters and patrons, likely because they were Spanish subjects, also had an affinity
for a similar naturalistic, soft, coloristic, “feminine” style.xv Rather than be marginalized
artistically, Artemisia chose to abandon her Caravaggism and embrace these new styles.xvi We
can see this particularly well in the 1636 London “Susanna,” which Riccardo Lattuada called “ . .
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. perhaps one of the finest accomplishments of Neapolitan painting in the first half of the
seventeenth century.”xvii
Jesse Locker notes that, from about 1640 until her death in Naples, the quality and style
of Artemisia’s paintings fluctuated dramatically, which he speculates was a function of a
combination of factors.xviii We see this fluctuation clearly when we compare the 1659 Brno
“Susanna” to the 1654 Bologna painting. Ward Bissell uses such phrases as “tired variations,”
“histrionic,” and “expressive artificiality” to describe the Brno painting, with its oddly posed
Susanna and awkward composition;xix even Mary Garrard, one of Artemisia’s staunchest
proponents, referred to its style as “strange and incomprehensible.”xx The Bologna “Susanna,” on
the other hand, is graceful both in Susanna’s pose and in overall composition; Locker refers to it
as a “splendid work.”xxi
Artemisia’s style may have changed over the course of this series, but her commitment to
portraying Susanna as a heroic and virtuous women did not.xxii Of course, Susanna is the heroine
of her story, but by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, her imagery stressed her sensual and
erotic appeal rather than her chastity and virtue (Fig 3).xxiii Across her series, Artemisia uses
three devices to demonstrate Susanna’s commitment to her own heroism in the form of that
chastity and virtue. The first is the most obvious: Susanna recoils or turns away from the elders,
signaling her rejection of their proposition. This approach is used to greatest effect in the 1610
Pommersfelden painting. Susanna’s legs and torso indicate that she had been sitting facing away
from the elders, while her shoulders indicate that she had turned toward them to speak. So
quickly does she turn her head away that it precedes her shoulders, resulting in the twisted
contrapposto that helps signal her distress. We see a dim echo of this in the 1649 Brno painting,
in which Susanna has flung her arms out to shield herself (as in the Pommersfelden painting) and
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thrown her head back as far as it will reach to escape the two men. More subtle still is the
Susanna in the 1652 Bologna painting, who is leaning away from the elders with one arm held up
to hold them off. Finally, in the 1622 Burghley House painting, Susanna has completely turned
away, showing her back to the elders.
The second device, seen only in the 1636 Bologna painting, is confrontation. Here
Susanna has turned to the elders and rested one arm calmly in her lap while raising the other in a
simple “no” or “halt” gesture. Her equally calm face registers no surprise, fear, or anguish. The
third device is the subtlest, and involves conflating two moments in the narrative: the moment
when the elders accost Susanna and the moment when, during her trial, “(t)earfully she turned
her eyes to Heaven, her heart confident in God” (Dn. 13:35). At that moment, Susanna places her
faith and trust in God, knowing He will reward her for her virtue. Babette Bohn credits Ludovico
Carracci with the first such reinterpretation of the story in his ca. 1598 painting, the most salient
feature of which is Susanna turning her eyes upward to heaven and into the light symbolizing
God’s presence.xxiv We see this device beautifully executed in the 1622 Burghley House painting
and equally effectively, if less beautifully, in the 1649 Brno painting. It is also suggested in the
1636 London painting: once Susanna turns away from the elders, she will face fully into the light
of God’s mercy.
Although Artemisia portrayed her Susannas as virtuous and chaste, she also met her
patrons’ expectations by painting them as erotic nudes intended for the male gaze.xxv The 1652
Bologna and 1649 Brno paintings demonstrate the simplest way to accomplish this: Susanna may
be showing her resistance, but she is still gracefully posed and either nude (Brno) or erotically
draped (Bologna) to entice the male viewer.xxvi Although the same applies to the other three
paintings, Artemisia added to their erotic appeal by quoting well-known classical works.xxvii
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With their twisted bodies and raised arms, both the 1610 and 1636 Susannas reference Eve from
Michelangelo’s “The Fall and Banishment” on the Sistine Ceiling (Fig. 4).xxviii As Eve, Susanna
becomes both the seduced and the seductress, and the core assumption of the painting becomes
whether or not she will give in to her own sexual instincts.xxix Even clearer is the enticement
offered by the 1622 “Susanna,” in which Artemisia quotes the crouching Venus Anadyomene, a
well-known classical figure associated with luxurious eroticism (Fig. 5).
Her ability to portray Susanna as simultaneously virtuous and erotic is an example of
Artemisia’s celebrated narrative originality, which includes her willingness to rethink convention
and ability to deploy sophisticated literary conceits in the service of that originality.xxx The 1610
Pommersfelden “Susanna” demonstrates that her ability to tell stories from a unique perspective
was present from the beginning of her career: its treatment of the Susanna story is unique in both
composition and emotional content, using a harsh realism and ominous setting to show viewers,
for the first time, a young woman in deep emotional distress.xxxi
Artemisia used an additional and subtle narrative device in the 1610 painting and
repeated it in her 1649 Brno “Susanna.” In both paintings, Susanna’s arms quote those of
Michelangelo’s Adam from “Expulsion of Adam and Eve” on the Sistine Ceiling (Fig. 4) and,
according to Mary Garrard, to the nurse’s arms on a relief of “Orestes Slaying Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus.”xxxii In both works, the gesture carries an implication of judgment. Susanna will be
judged for her alleged transgression, but the ultimate judgment will be of the elders
themselves.xxxiii Thus, a single gesture encapsulates the central turning point of the story.
The 1636 London “Susanna” is another example of a narratively unique depiction of
Susanna’s tale. Here, rather than seeming shocked, distressed, or fearful, Susanna appears to be
calmly confronting the elders with a simple gesture of denial. The elders appear to have drawn
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back in response: they are not looming over her or standing as close as they are in the other
paintings. Although she is naked and seated below them, Susanna appears in control of the
encounter. This treatment is in keeping with the Biblical text in that, after making her decision to
deny the elders, it is Susanna herself who claims agency over her fate when she “ . . . crie(s) out
with a loud voice . . .” to summon her servants (Dn. 13:24). Interestingly, this was the first
“Susanna” Artemisia painted after returning from Venice, where the “questione della donna” –
the question of the status, abilities, and roles of women – was being actively debated by her
contemporaries. Advocates on both sides used historical figures as exemplars; Susanna was
upheld as an example of a chaste and virtuous woman.xxxiv Is it coincidence that Artemisia also
portrays this Susanna as stronger than the men who attempt to harm her?
Artemisia demonstrates her ability to tell old stories in new ways, not only in these
individual paintings, but also through the series as a whole. Viewed in the order in which they
were painted, we can see that no two are alike enough to be called repetitions of the same type.
But the series can also be read in a different order, one that reveals each painting as a different
moment in Susanna’s fully heroic narrative (Fig. 6).
Read this way, the story begins with the 1652 Bologna painting, which shows Susanna
first being startled by the elders’ appearance in the garden. The elders have just begun to
approach; she has flung up a hand and leaned back, but only slightly. She has not begun to turn
away. As they come closer and begin to speak, she flings her head back in horror (the 1649 Brno
painting) before turning away in shame (the 1610 Pommersfelden painting). Having made her
decision, and trusting in God, she confronts the elders and tells them her decision (the 1636
London painting); her forcefulness startles them into backing away temporarily. Finally, even as
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the elders insistently loom over her again, she turns away and surrenders herself to God (the
1622 Burghley house painting).
This reading is not intended to suggest that Artemisia deliberately set out to create a
sequential narrative of Susanna’s story. Rather it points out how attuned Artemisia was to that
story: each time she painted it, she could envision and realize a unique moment and perspective
from the tale. This begs the question of why – what led Artemisia to create so many original
representations of this story? We can’t know the answer with any certainty. We don’t know, for
example, how many of the paintings were commissioned and how many were painted on
speculation. We also don’t know how much control she had over the compositions even when we
know something about the paintings’ histories (as in the 1610 Pommersfelden and 1622
Burghley House works, for example).
We do know, however, that Artemisia brought her characters most fully to life when she
felt some sort of identification with them.xxxv And while we shouldn’t overemphasize it, we can’t
deny the parallels between Susanna’s story and Artemisia’s own experience as a victim of sexual
violence. Could Artemisia identify more with Susanna than with, for example, Bathsheba (the
other female nude of her later years)? Could that, as a consequence, enable her to mine
Susanna’s story for a longer series of separate, more nuanced, moments? Does Artemisia give us
a clue when we compare the face of the 1622 Susanna to the portrait of Artemisia painted by
Vouet at about the same time (Fig. 7)? Whether autobiographical or not, whether eroticized and
idealized or not, we must recognize that Artemisia brings a heroic Susanna fully to life through
this series.
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Endnotes
The date of Artemisia’s death is uncertain. The last documentary evidence of her life is a signed
contract dated 1654; the 1656 plague in Naples is a likely cause of her death. See Jesse Locker,
Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015),
178.
ii
Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 189.
iii
Unless otherwise indicated, for Artemisia’s paintings I am following R. Ward Bissell,
Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné
(University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) except for the
addition of the 1652 “Susanna,” discussed in Locker,Language of Painting, 169-170 and the
inclusion of the 1622 Burghley House “Susanna” as discussed by Judith Mann, “Susanna and the
Elders,” in Keith Christiansen and Judith Mann, eds., Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh.
cat., Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, Rome, 15 October 2001-6 January 2002, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, 14 February – 12 May 2002, The Saint Louis Art Museum, 15 June
– 15 September 2002 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of New York, 2001), 355-356.
iv
Artemisia Gentileschi, “Letter from Artemisia Gentileschi to Don Antonio Ruffo, in Messina,”
in Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 397.
v
Edward J. Olszewski, “Expanding the Litany for Susanna and the Elders,” Notes in the History
of Art 26, no.3 (Spring 2007), 42.
vi
Cristelle L. Baskins, “’La Festa di Susanna’: Virtue on Trial in Renaissance Sacred Drama and
Painted Wedding Chests,” Art History, 14 no. 3 (September 1991), 329-331.
vii
Babette Bohn, “Rape and the Gendered Gaze: Susanna and the Elders in Early Modern
Bologna,” Biblical Interpretation 9, no. 3, 259, 261; Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female
Hero, 193-194.
viii
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 191.
ix
Because it was her first work and completed when she was only seventeen years old, debate
still exists over the extent to which her father, Orazio, participated its planning and execution.
See, e.g., Garrard Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero 185; Keith Christiansen, “Becoming
Artemisia: Afterthoughts on the Gentileschi Exhibition,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 39,
(2004), 102-105.
x
X-ray analysis reveals that the left side of this painting was revised (painted over), although
debate remains over both the extent of the repainting and whose hand was responsible. See, e.g.,
Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi: Catalogue Raisonné, 348-350; Mary Garrard, Artemisia
Gentileschi Around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2001), 89-113;
xi
The extent to which this painting is a collaboration among Artemisia, Bernardo Cavallino,
Domenico Gargiulo (thought to have painted the garden and possibly the architecture), and
Viviano Codazzi (who possibly painted the architecture) remains under debate. For the purposes
of this paper, I assume that Artemisia, if she did not paint the figures herself, at least approved
the design. For discussion see, e.g., Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi: Catalogue Raisonné, 266267; Riccardo Lattuada, “Artemisia and Naples, Naples and Artemisia,” in Christiansen and
Mann, Orazio and Artemisia, 384-385; Locker,Language of Painting, 118.
xii
Locker,Language of Painting, 3.
i
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xiii
Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi, Catalogue Raisonné, 352; Mann, “Susanna and the Elders,” in
Christiansen and Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 358.
xiv
Locker,Language of Painting, 23, 27.
xv
Locker, Language of Painting, 27, 28.
xvi
Locker, Language of Painting, 42.
xvii
Lattuada, “Artemisia and Naples,” 384.
xviii
These include economic and political turmoil in Naples, Artemisia’s own declining health,
and her increasing dependence on workshop assistants. Locker, Language of Painting, 4.
xix
Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi, Catalogue Raisonné, 293
xx
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, Female Hero, 134.
xxi
Locker, Language of Painting, 170.
xxii
Artemisia was known for her portrayals of heroic female protagonists; see, e.g., Richard
Spear, “I have made up my mind to take a short trip to Rome,” in Christiansen and Mann, eds.,
Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 338 and Babette Bohn, “Death, Dispassion, and the Female
Hero: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Jael and Sisera,” in Mieke Bal, ed., The Artemisia Files (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 127.
xxiii
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 188.
xxiv
Bohn, “Rape and the Gendered Gaze,” 270
xxv
Just as she was known for painting heroic female protagonists, Artemisia was also known for
her ability and willingness to paint female nudes (they comprise approximately one-third of her
known output, for reasons beyond the scope of this paper) – see, e.g., Ann Harris and Linda
Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550-1950, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 21
December 1976-13 March 1977, The University of Texas at Austin, 12 April-12 June, 1977,
Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 14 July-4 September 1977, The Brooklyn
Museum, 8 October-27 November, 1977 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
1976); Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi, Catalogue Rainsonné; Elizabeth Cropper, “Life on the
Edge: Artemisia Gentileschi, Famous Woman Painter,” in Christiansen and Mann, eds., Orazio
and Artemisia Gentileschi, 271; John Loughery, “Sexual Violence: Baroque to Surrealist,” The
Hudson Review 55, no. 2 (Summer, 2002), 295.
xxvi
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 191
xxvii
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 194-196.
xxviii
Nancy Salomon, “Judging Artemisia: A Baroque Woman in Modern Art History,” in Bal,
ed., The Artemisia Files, 41.
xxix
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 193-94.
xxx
Mann, “The Myth of Artemisia as Chameleon: A New Look at the London Allegory of
Painting,” in Mann, ed., Artemisia Gentileschi: Taking Stock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 73;
Bohn, “Death, Dispassion and the Female Hero,” 127; Locker, Language of Painting, 2015, 63.
xxxi
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 189.
xxxii
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 197-198.
xxxiii
Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Female Hero, 198.
xxxiv
Locker, Language of Painting, 70-71.
xxxv
Garrard, Artemisia: Female Hero: 47, 92
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Spear, Richard. “’I have made up my mind to take a short trip to Rome.’” In Christiansen and
Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 334-343.
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Images
Figure 1. Examples of repeated image types by Artemisia Gentileschi. 1a: Penitent Magdalen.
(L) ca. 1625-26. Oil on canvas, 1.22 x .96 m? Seville, Cathedral; (R) ca. 1625-26. Oil on canvas,
1.365 x 1.00 m. Private Collection. 1b. Judith and her Maidservant. (L) ca. 1640-45. Oil on
canvas, 2.35 x 1.72 m. Cannes, Musée de la Castre. (R) ca. 1645-50. Oil on canvas, 2.72 x 2.21
m. Naples, Museo di Capodimonte. 1c: Bathsheba. (L) Ca. 1650-52. Oil on canvas,
measurements unknown. Formerly (destroyed) Gosford House, Scotland, Earl of Wemyss. (R)
Pietro (Pierre) Fevère tapestry (after Artemisia Gentileschi, Bathsheba, ca. 1650-52. Oil on
canvas, 2.86 x 2.14m. Florence, Palazzo Pitti, storage), 1665, Petraia, Villa Medici. From Bissell,
Artemisia Gentileschi Catalogue Raisonné. Figures 191, 192, color plates X, XI, figures 199,
200 respectively.
Fig. 1a.
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Fig. 1b.
Fig. 1c.
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Fig. 2. The five known Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi. 2a: 1610. Oil on
canvas, 1.70 x 1.21 m. Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstsein. Available from ARTstor,
http://www.artstor.org (accessed 2 February 2015). 2b. 1622. Oil on canvas, 63 5/8 x 48 3/8 in.
(161.5 x 123 cm). Collection of the Marquess of Exeter, Burghley House, Stamford,
Lincolnshire. From Christiansen and Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 357. 2c: ca. 163637. Oil on canvas, 2.65 x 2.10 m. London, Sotheby’s, 1995. From Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi:
Catalogue Raisonné, color plate XXIV. 2d: 1649. Oil on canvas, 80 ¾ x 66 1/8 in. (105 x 168
cm). Moravaská Galerie, Brno (inv. M246). From Christiansen and Mann, Orazio and Artemisia
Gentileschi, 425. 2e. 1652. Oil on canvas. 78 7/8 x 88 7/8 in. (200.3 x 225.6 cm). Pinacoteca
Nazionale, Bologna. From Locker, Language of Painting, 163.
2a.
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2b.
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2c.
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2d.
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2e.
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Figure 3. Comparison of 15th century “Susanna and the Elders” featuring Susanna’s piety with
later depictions stressing Susanna’s erotic appeal. 3a: Bernardino Pinturicchio and his workshop,
1492-95. Fresco. Vatican City, Appartamento Borgia, Vatican Palace. Available from ARTstor,
http://www.artstor.org (accessed 17 March 2015). 3b: Jacopo Tintoretto, 1555-56. Oil on canvas,
146.5 x 193.6 cm. Wien, Kunsthisorisches Museum. Available from ARTstor,
http://www.artstor.org (accessed 17 March 2015). 3c: Annibale Carracci, 1590. Etching and
engraving on laid paper. Sheet 31.8 x 331.1 cm. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art.
Available from ARTstor, http://www.artstor.org (accessed 17 March 2015). 3d: Giuseppe Cesari
(Cavalier d’Arpino), 1604-08. Print. 52.8 x 37.1 cm. Siena, Spedale di Maria della Scala.
Available from ARTstor, http://www.artstor.org (accessed 17 March 2015).
3a:
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3b:
3c:
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3d:
Fig. 4. Michelangelo, left to right: “Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve; Expulsion from
Paradise,” 1580-1512. Fresco. Vatican City, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace. Available from
ARTstor, http://www.artstor.org (accessed 17 March 2015).
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Fig. 5. Example of the crouching Venus Anadyomene. Roman after Greek original, “Lely’s
Venus,” 2nd Century AD. Marble, 1.20 m. Available from the British Museum website
http://www.britishmuseum.org (accessed 19 March 2015).
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Fig. 6. Narrative reading of Artemisia’s “Susanna and the Elders” series, beginning with the
moment when the elders first approach. 6a: 1652 Bologna: the elders first approach to Susanna’s
surprise. 6b: 1659 Brno: Susanna recoils in horror at their proposition; 6c: 1610 Pommersfelden:
Susanna turns away in shame and anguish; 6d: 1636 London: Susanna confronts the elders with
her decision to turn them away; 6e: 1622 Burghley House: Susanna turns her back on the elders
and gives herself up to God’s judgment. This is brilliant.
6a.
6c.
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Fig. 7. Comparison of 1622 Burghley House Susanna to Simon Vouet’s portrait of Artemisia
painted at around the same time. 7a: 1622 Burghley House Susanna, detail. 7b. Simon Vouet,
“Portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi,” c. 1625. Oil on canvas, 35 3/8 x 28 in. (90 x 71 cm). Private
collection. From Locker, Language of Painting, 21.
7a.
7b.
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