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The story comes from an addition to the Book of Daniel. Susanna, a married woman, is bathing in her walled garden when two respected elders who have hidden there step out and demand that she sleep with them. She refuses, so they accuse her in public of adultery, a charge that carried death, until the young Daniel questions the two men separately and catches them contradicting each other. Painters loved the subject because it let them show a nude with a clear conscience. Veronese, working in Venice in the 1580s, makes it harder to enjoy that way: his elders have stopped watching and started grabbing, crowding in on her from both sides. One of them slides a hand toward her breast while she twists her whole body away.