Susanna and the Elders

Rubens signed and dated this small panel in 1614, six years after coming home to Antwerp from a long stay in Italy. These were good years for the city. The Twelve Years' Truce, agreed in 1609, had paused the long war with the Dutch to the north, and a peaceful, prosperous Antwerp kept his large workshop busy with everything from towering altarpieces to intimate pictures like this one, barely two feet high. The subject comes from the Book of Daniel. Susanna, a respected wife, is bathing in her garden when two of the town's elders, judges both, corner her and threaten to accuse her of adultery unless she gives in. She refuses. Rubens catches that instant of pressure, the two grey heads leaning in as she twists away. In the story she is condemned on their word and then saved, when a young Daniel questions the two men apart and their accounts fall apart.