Susanna and the Elders

Chassériau signed and dated this small panel in 1856, the year he died, in October, at 37. He had painted Susanna 17 years earlier, on a canvas taller than a man, with the two elders hidden far back among the trees. On this board, about 40 centimetres high, he brings them right up against her.

It is the moment of the threat in the Book of Daniel. The two old men, both judges of the people, have caught her alone at her bath and tell her that unless she gives herself to them they will swear they saw her with a young man. One in a red cloak bends toward her from the left, the other, in a turban, leans in over his shoulder. Susanna turns away from them with her arms crossed over her breast and a white cloth gathered round her hips, still standing in the water.

The panel stayed with the painter's family for almost 80 years, until Baron Arthur Chassériau left it to the Louvre in 1934.