Susanna and the Elders

Rubens was around 60 when he painted this panel in the late 1630s, some 30 years after he had first taken on the subject as a young man in Rome. The story is told in the Book of Daniel. Two respected elders spy on Susanna as she bathes in her garden and demand that she give herself to them. Here she sits huddled on a low seat, pulling a dark cloak over her body, while the two men are still clambering over the garden wall. Her folded, crouching pose comes from an ancient sculpture, most likely the type known as the Crouching Venus, and the museum reads it as an image of chastity, set against the old men's greedy, grasping gestures. Rebuffed, they later accuse her in public of adultery, and only the prophet Daniel proves her innocent. The carved frame around the panel was designed in the 18th century by Joseph Effner, court architect to the Bavarian elector Max Emanuel.