Susanna and the Elders

Rubens painted Susanna and the Elders around 1597, one of the pre-Italian works from his Antwerp apprenticeship period, treating one of the most popular narrative subjects in Western painting. The biblical story from the Book of Daniel — the virtuous Susanna spied upon by lecherous elders while bathing, falsely accused of immorality, and vindicated by the young prophet Daniel — simultaneously offered artists a narrative justification for the female nude and a moral argument about justice and false witness. From Tintoretto and Rembrandt to Artemisia Gentileschi, the subject was treated with enormous variety of emphasis: the female vulnerability, the male predation, or the judicial vindication receiving different weight in different hands. The early Rubens's treatment, while showing his precociousness, still reflects his Northern training: the narrative drama is present, but the physical dynamism and compositional freedom that Italy would give him are not yet apparent. The Metropolitan's holding allows comparison with Rubens's more developed treatments of the female nude from his mature and late periods.

The youthful work shows Rubens's early style before his Italian transformation, with somewhat darker tones and more linear contours than his mature manner. The flesh painting, while competent, lacks the luminous warmth of his later nudes.

This early Rubens from 1597 has undergone significant conservation over its long history. The painting surface shows some wearing in the darker passages. Cleaning campaigns have removed discolored varnish layers, and retouching addresses areas of paint loss, particularly along the edges.