Susanna and the Elders

In 1639 Charles I's surveyor of pictures went through Whitehall Palace listing the royal collection room by room. Above the chimney in the Queen's Withdrawing Chamber he recorded a Susanna with two elders, done by Artemisia Gentileschi. She was in London then. Her father Orazio had worked for the English court since 1626 and had died there that February, and the painting was most likely made for Queen Henrietta Maria.

The subject comes from the Book of Daniel. Susanna, a married woman, is bathing in her garden when two elders of her community corner her and threaten to testify that she has committed adultery unless she submits to them. She refuses, they accuse her, and she is condemned, until Daniel questions the two men apart from each other and their stories fail to match.

Her name then came off the picture. A printed transcription of the royal catalogue in 1757 dropped the attribution. The canvas was enlarged along two edges, worn by decades above fireplaces and put into store, where it sat catalogued as 17th-century French school. Royal Collection curators traced it back to that 1639 line only in the last decade. Cleaning took off the additions and the overpaint and returned it to roughly its original size, about 189 by 143 centimetres. No signature came to light. The corner where she usually placed one, by the fountain at the lower left, is the most worn part of the canvas.