Anonymous, French school
14^th century
illumination on parchment
18cm x 14cm
Chantilly, Musée Condé
© RMN / René-Gabriel Ojéda

Jean Mansel
15^th century
illumination
18cm X 14cm
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Western manuscripts
© Français 55, BnF

Domenico di Michelino
15^th century
oil
43cm x 170cm
Avignon, musée du Petit Palais, Collection Campana
© RMN / René-Gabriel Ojéda

Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto
16^th century
oil on canvas
167cm x 238cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
© RMN / Hervé Lewandowski / Thierry Le Mage

The uniqueness of this rendering of Susanna at her Bath by Tintoretto lies both in the perspective afforded by the row of trees linking the nude figure with the lustful looks of the elders, and by the mirror placed on the ground between the legs of the bathing beauty, which reflects nothing. As with Rembrandt and Rubens later, here we are dealing with portrayal, voyeurism and desire. The elders are painted figures who are looking at nothing and see nothing. Our gaze on the other hand, which Tintoretto makes lustful, tries to catch a glimpse of Susanna's "secrets" in the mirror. But Susanna is chaste and we see nothing. We see nothing because we are not looking in the right place, we are looking for the subject without even seeing the painting.

Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto
1555
oil on canvas
146cm x 193.6cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
© Photobusiness - ARTOTHEK

In this other version on the same theme of Susanna at her Bath, Tintoretto links the gazes of the two elders by the line of perspective provided by the hedge. The mirror, which reflects nothing except a scrap of white material, is placed between them. And the water in the fountain, which plays the same part as the mirror in the Louvre painting, apart from its limpid transparency, shows nothing other than the reflection of the stones. The story is the same, only the scene is different. But this time we have understood. We do not try to look for Susanna's secrets in the river where they are not to be seen. And that is a pity, because although Susanna's reflection is not there, the painting is there, splendid, imposing, breathtaking.

Paolo Caliari (Veronese)
16^th century
oil on canvas
198cm x 198cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
© RMN / Gérard Blot

In his version of Susanna, Veronese depicts threatening, insistent elders making improper gestures. They are no longer just looking, they are acting. One of them slides his hand towards the woman's breast. And what is the other one doing, with his right hand resting on the fountain and his left... what is happening there? And the delightful faun, sculpted like a figurehead, observes the scene with a smile: indeed, it's not the little dog hidden under Susanna's skirt that will defend her virtue. Leaving the story aside, Veronese manages here to create various shades of yellowish and greenish grey tones rising up behind the reds and pinks of the garments, lending an unspeakable tinge of melancholy to the Venetian sky.

Rembrandt van Rijn
1647
oil on mahogany panel
76.6cm x 92.7 cm
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
© Blauel - ARTOTHEK

Rembrandt painted his Susanna in 1647, a period when he was using a reduced palette—here browns, ochers and reds. Like in Veronese's painting in the Louvre, the elders are shown imposing themselves on the lady. Curiously, Susanna does not appear panic-stricken. Her hands are joined in a gesture of prayer that looks like she is about to dive in the water. And she is the one looking. She is looking at the viewer, that is Rembrandt himself, perhaps seeking his permission. Unless she has realized that she was being spied on by the viewer, who as a result finds himself in the role of one of the elders. But the elders are fictitious painted figures, colored, ordered matter. Who then is the real voyeur in this story?

Peter Paul Rubens
1636/1639
oil on oak panel
77cm x 110cm
Munich, Alte Pinakothek
© Blauel/Gnamm - ARTOTHEK

Susanna at her Bath is a late work of Rubens and reveals all that made his reputation: the flamboyant colors he borrowed from the Venetians (mainly Titian whose work he discovered when he traveled in Italy between 1600 and 1608), and the sensual baroque style, that decorative luxury, that so impressed Renoir. As in Rembrandt's work, Susanna is looking at the viewer who—going by the enthusiasm of the elders, the position of the lady and the ambiguous gesture of her right hand—is about to witness coitus. We are invited. As with Rembrandt, here we are dealing above all with desire and looking, in other words with portrayal.

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
18th century
oil on canvas
117cm x 99cm
Dijon, Musée Magnin
© RMN / Franck Raux

Pellegrini's Susanna looks slightly foolish. She is scratching her head, as if she is thinking over the elders' proposition. They appear rather cool, teasing a little, like two mischievous children. The bare breast is a suggestive affectation peculiar to the 18^th century style. Yet the colors of the painting are soft and subtle, unquestionably Venetian. The background with its pale green and blue sky works particularly well and proves that the painter was a skilled decorative artist. Pellegrini is a minor painter but his palette is thought perhaps to have influenced that of the younger Tiepolo, born in Venice in 1696.

Eugène Delacroix
19^th century
oil on canvas
Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts
© RMN / Philipp Bernard

Delacroix's Susanna is chaste—at least that is the subtitle of this sketch for a picture that was never actually painted. This work is reminiscent of a sketch of a pietà kept in the Louvre and painted in 1837; the final painting, in which the composition is reversed, hangs in the church of St Denys du Saint-Sacrement in Paris. In both pictures, Delacroix has painted a shape—vegetable or mineral—that conjures up the curtain in a theatre. In the St Denys work, the curtain opened onto a weeping Virgin Mary, her arms spread out like a cross. Here it opens onto a scene describing an act of real aggression: the elders are about to rape the woman. The chaste Susanna appears to abandon herself, as if she were dead, as a result turning the elders into undertakers and the painting, a peculiarity of its composition, into a strange Deposition from the Cross.

Gustave Moreau
19^th century
oil on canvas
33cm x 40cm
Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau
© RMN / René-Gabriel Ojéda

In this sketch, Susanna is stepping into the bath and her position is reminiscent of Moreau's female study for Delilah. The two elders are hidden behind a wall. In another drawing, we see the same figures approaching Susanna who is defended by Daniel in the final judgment. No more expressions of lust in Moreau. It is the second half of the 19^th century and bourgeois order prevails. Sensuality is banned. The twinkle in the eye of the viewers of centuries past has faded. Moreau himself called another of his paintings Chaste Susanna. "Et les enfants de chœur / se masturbaient tout tristes", sang Brassens.

Lovis Corinth
1923
oil on canvas
150.3cm x 111cm
Hannover, Landesmuseum
© Blauel/Gnamm - ARTOTHEK

Lovis Corinth's Susanna occupies a narrow gap between Expressionism and abstract art. When he did this watercolor in 1923, the painter was himself 65 years old and the odds are that he placed himself on the side of the lustful elders. This is why they appear more jovial than threatening. As for Susanna, a well-rounded, buxom, desirable woman, she is negotiating with the two men, face to face, on equal terms. This is not therefore a fearful Susanna, or even the chaste Susanna of the myth, but a modern, sensual woman of the kind favored and painted by the earthy Corinth, who often liked to portray himself as a merry Bacchus.

Raoul Dufy
c. 1945
oil on Isorel panel
40cm x 50cm
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou
© ADAGP, Photo CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN / Jean-François Tomasian

Susanna and the Elders, painted in 1945, belongs to the second period, by which time Dufy had long abandoned the legacy of Cézanne and Matisse. His lines were softer, the colors more washed-out. As for Susanna, she has lost her sensuality, her eroticism and even the interest of the sleepy elders. As if Dufy himself no longer believed in the power of his painting.

Jean-Michel Alberola
1981
pastel and charcoal on two sheets of laid paper stuck together
41cm x 50cm
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou
© ADAGP, Photo CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN / Philippe Migeat

This Susanna is an early collage. Two sheets of paper are stuck together, two studies for a drawing inspired by Titian's Susanna. This combining of two images produces a repetition or an echo that gives the work its uniqueness. In the right-hand image, the elder looks at Susanna, while in the left-hand image the same Susanna is the model for the painter's picture. As the majority of his predecessors had done before him, Alberola is telling us that this story is above all about looking: who is looking at whom, who is looking at what, who is who and who is what?