National Gallery of Art

The story of the beautiful and chaste Susanna is recounted in Daniel 13. Two elders of Babylon lusted for Susanna, the wife of the priest Joachim. They spied upon her as she bathed, then threatened to falsely accuse her of adultery with another man unless she submitted to their advances. Although the subject can be interpreted as a parable of justice—Susanna is ultimately vindicated—artists of the period clearly favored the image of the nude Susanna at the bath for its sensual appeal.[1]  [1]
The story is omitted entirely from many editions of the Bible, including the King James version and later revisions.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s Susanna and the Elders (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), painted when the artist was still in his 30s, is justifiably considered one of his greatest works, for its incandescent nude, evocative background, complicated play of pictorial space, and witty juxtaposition of different ways of looking.[2]  [2]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. no. 200; 2: figs. 262–264; Tom Nichols, Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity (London, 1999), 91–93; Miguel Falomir, ed., Tintoretto (Madrid, 2007), cat. no. 31; Frederick Ilchman et al., Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (Boston, 2009), cat. no. 31; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), no. 64. A much later version from Tintoretto’s studio, executed with substantial participation by assistants (now Louvre, Paris) employs a similar format and is clearly intended to evoke the earlier painting, although it falls short of the magic of that work; Pallucchini and Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane, 1: cat. no. 144, 2: fig. 191; Echols and Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue,” no. 144. The Gallery’s Susanna is a much simpler conception, focusing on the nude figure, with only the barest allusion to narrative elements in the two sketchy figures of the elders in the background, and none of the sophisticated intellectual content of the earlier painting.[3]  [3]
Neither the Vienna, Paris, nor Washington paintings adhere strictly to the biblical text, in which Susanna is accosted by the lecherous elders as soon as she has sent her two maids away to fetch soap and oils; thus, she never receives the bathing accoutrements or has time to bathe.

Tintoretto’s 17th-century biographer Carlo Ridolfi reported that “Senator Lorenzo Delfino [Dolfin] has . . . six scenes from the Old Testament placed above doors; namely . . .  Susanna in the garden, and the two old men, emerging in the distance from a pergola.”[4]  [4]
“Il Signor Lorenzo Delfino Senator ha . . . sei historie del vecchio testmento collocate sopra poste; cioè . . . Susana nel giardino, & i due vecchi, che spuntano di lontano da un pergolato.” (“Poste” is presumed to be an error for porte, or doors.) Carlo Ridolfi, Vita di Giacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto (Venice, 1642), 72; Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo Le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato (Venice, 1648), 2:45; Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo Le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato, ed. Detlev von Hadeln (Berlin, 1924), 2:53–54. The passage was first linked to the Gallery’s painting by Wilhelm Suida (manuscript opinion in NGA curatorial files). The other subjects mentioned by Ridolfi as part of the ensemble were Adam and Eve, Hagar and the Angel, Lot and His Daughters, Abraham Sacrificing Isaac, and Ruth and Boaz. All seem to be lost. The Gallery’s Susanna fits this description. The somewhat perfunctory nature of the picture’s composition and execution is consistent with an origin as part of a decorative ensemble rather than as a painting intended to be appreciated on its own.[5]  [5]
The Gallery’s Summer, 1961.9.90, is an example of an autograph painting from a decorative cycle by Jacopo Tintoretto.

The Gallery’s Susanna has been accepted as an autograph work by Tintoretto by a number of scholars, among them Bernard Berenson, Rodolfo Pallucchini, and Paola Rossi, and, in early manuscript opinions, Roberto Longhi, Raimond van Marle, F. Mason Perkins, Giuseppe Fiocco, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi.[6]  [6]
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School (London, 1957), 1:183; Rodolfo Pallucchini (letter of January 16, 1971, copy in NGA curatorial files); Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1:210, no. 377; 2: fig. 487 (dated to 1577–1578); see also Pierluigi De Vecchi, L’opera completa del Tintoretto (Milan, 1970), 115, no. 216 (“prevalentamente attribuita,” dated to c. 1575); Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 201. The manuscript opinions, copies of which are in NGA curatorial files, from Roberto Longhi, Raimond van Marle, F. Mason Perkins, Giuseppe Fiocco, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi, all praise it highly. Dissenters, however, include Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, Fern Rusk Shapley, and Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, and the painting can best be deemed a studio work.[7]  [7]
In 1973 Fern Rusk Shapley assigned it to Tintoretto’s studio, but in 1979 saw some involvement of Tintoretto himself. Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI–XVIII Century (London, 1973), 58; and Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:472–473. Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat (manuscript opinion, NGA curatorial files) called the execution clumsy, the composition lifeless, and the narrative undramatic, and ascribed it to an imitator of Tintoretto. Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman attributed it to Tintoretto’s studio, probably by Domenico, 1580s. Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), 143, no. S36. The nude figure is comparable to those in other paintings that can be identified as Tintoretto studio products of the 1570s and 1580s, such as the Concert (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), Leda and the Swan (two versions, both Uffizi, Florence), and Hercules Ejecting the Faun from the Bed of Omphale (Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest; probably by Jacopo Tintoretto’s son Domenico).[8]  [8]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. nos. 204, 158, 384, and 447; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), nos. 215, 221, 222, and 214. These nude figures can be distinguished from those by Jacopo Tintoretto himself, such as those in Tarquin and Lucretia (Art Institute of Chicago); in the allegories painted for the Atrio Quadrato in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice; and in the Origin of the Milky Way (National Gallery, London).[9]  [9]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. nos. 450, 373–376, and 390; Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), nos. 219, 201–204, and 213. All of these show a more convincing sense of the figures’ underlying anatomy and dynamics, as well as more varied and dynamic compositions.[10]  [10]
On these elements as central to Tintoretto connoisseurship, see Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), 99. Similarly, as noted by Shapley, the shorthand rendering of the two elders under the arbor in the background, while resembling similarly sketchy figures in works by Tintoretto dating back to the Miracle of the Slave of 1548, lacks the virtuoso mastery of Tintoretto’s own hand.[11]  [11]
In comparison, the similarly conceived little figures in the background of Tintoretto’s San Trovaso Last Supper are equally sketchy, but convincingly volumetric and dynamic, like Tintoretto’s drawings; see Miguel Falomir, ed., Tintoretto (Madrid, 2007), cat. no. 32, fig. 160 (detail). The maid seems almost an afterthought, throwing the composition off-balance. Her facial type is one that appears regularly in paintings that can be associated with Domenico, such as the Budapest Hercules and Omphale.[12]  [12]
See Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology,” in Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26–27, 2007 (Madrid, 2009), no. 214. A similar figure appears in the Entombment (Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice), primarily executed by Domenico; see Miguel Falomir, ed., Tintoretto (Madrid, 2007), cat. no. 49; Echols and Ilchman, “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue,” no. 313. The picture can thus provisionally be assigned to Domenico, working in his father’s studio. However, the identification of different hands in the Tintoretto shop remains a challenge. Moreover, this painting was probably produced during Jacopo Tintoretto’s lifetime and, as a product of his studio, would have been accepted as a work “by Tintoretto.”

Robert Echols

March 21, 2019

Associated Names