Bathseba before David

Bathsheba before David, dated 1630 and in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, engages with the Old Testament narrative in which King David, seeing Bathsheba bathing from his rooftop, desires her, arranges her husband Uriah's death in battle, and takes her as his wife. The subject was rich in art-historical precedent — Rembrandt and Rubens both painted versions — because it combined the legitimate pleasure of depicting a beautiful female nude with a moral narrative about the abuse of power. Strozzi's treatment in the Venetian period brings his warm, Rubensian colourist approach to the subject. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden holds one of the finest collections of Baroque painting, making Strozzi's work well-contextualised there.

Canvas with the full-bodied, warm figure treatment Strozzi developed in Venice. Bathsheba's figure is the compositional centre — bathed in warm light that makes her simultaneously beautiful and vulnerable. David, if depicted observing from a distance, is smaller and more shadowed, reversing conventional power dynamics visually.