Susanna and the Elders

The story of Susanna, spied on by two elders as she bathed, was usually an excuse to paint a nude at the centre of the picture. Altdorfer, working in 1526 in Regensburg, did almost the opposite. He pushed Susanna and her maids down into the bottom-left corner, small figures at a fountain, and gave the whole rest of the panel to an enormous, imaginary palace with terraces, gardens and stairs climbing into the sky. He was a painter for whom buildings and landscape mattered as much as people. He was also among the first in Germany to build a scene with the sharp angled perspective he had picked up from Italian art, which is why that palace seems to recede so convincingly into depth.