Susanna and the Elders

The story comes from the Book of Daniel. Two elders of the community, both serving as judges, hide in the garden of Susanna, a rich man's wife, while she bathes, and tell her to give herself to them, or they will swear they caught her with a young man. In the Latin Bible she answers that she is hemmed in on every side, since to give in is death and to refuse is to fall into their hands. She refuses, and cries out.

Rubens came back to the subject several times, beginning with a small canvas in Rome around 1606. This one is far larger, almost two and a half metres wide. The gallery dates it only within the decade from 1610 to 1620. It came to the gallery as a gift of King Charles Albert in 1842, ten years after he had opened the royal pictures to the public as a gallery in Turin.