Susanna and the Elders

Joachim Wtewael belonged to an earlier world of Dutch painting than the date on this picture suggests. He was a leading figure of Utrecht Mannerism, a style of elegant, elongated figures and jewel-bright colour that had been in fashion around 1600. By the 1630s, when this Susanna and the Elders was made, that manner was long out of date. Utrecht painters had turned to the dramatic realism learned from Caravaggio in Italy, and Wtewael, by then in his seventies, kept working in the refined style of his youth. The subject comes from the Book of Daniel, where two elders spy on the chaste Susanna at her bath and then threaten her. Alongside his painting Wtewael ran a successful flax business and sat on the Utrecht city council. He died in 1638.