Susanna and the Elders

In 1783 Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese was remaking the interiors of his family's villa on the Pincian Hill, helped by the architect Antonio Asprucci and the Scottish painter and dealer Gavin Hamilton. Through the two of them he bought this canvas, along with a group of Flemish pictures. Honthorst had signed and dated it 1655, a year before he died in Utrecht. The story comes from the Book of Daniel. Two elders surprise Susanna at her bath, and one pulls at the white sheet she clutches to herself as she cries out. A drawing of the same subject by Honthorst from the late 1620s, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, shows her seated on the rim of the basin instead of standing in the water, so the painting may repeat a lost composition from his early years.