Susanna in the bath (Tintoretto)
|
| Susanna in the bath |
|---|
| Jacopo Tintoretto , 1555/56 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 146 × 193.6 cm |
| Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
_-_WGA22658.jpg)
Susanna in the bath (also Susanna and the Elders ) is an act by Jacopo Tintoretto from around 1555/56. It is owned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna .
description
The oil painting depicts a scene from the biblical story of Susanna in the bath . Susanna is in her husband's garden and is preparing for a bath. She is sitting completely naked on the right in the picture on a stone below a tree and looks at herself in the mirror, which is leaning against a rose hedge in bloom between two trees. The trunk of the front tree extends like a line over the entire height of the picture and divides it into two sections: a left, which covers only about 20 percent of the picture area, and a significantly larger right, which takes up around 80 percent. Sunlight falls on parts of Susanna's face and body, which Tintoretto has worked out as a chiaroscuro effect. The young woman bends forward slightly and pulls her right leg up to her upper body with her arms. In her right hand she holds a light white cloth, lined with lace and gold fringes, which surrounds her right leg. Susanna's left foot is submerged in the water up to the calf. Her blonde hair is lavishly braided, a ring with a white pearl hangs on her left ear, and she wears a bracelet on each wrist. Next to the mirror is the jewelry she has taken off, two gold rings, the pearl necklace, hairpin, hair comb and a white ointment vessel. Behind Susanna you can see her sumptuously embroidered red dress, which contrasts with the white elements.
Two old men emerge - unnoticed by Susanna - as voyeurs from both sides of the rose wall. One of the men looks around the rose hedge in the background. The second, a bald man with a white beard, clad in a bright, salmon-red robe, crawls out on the floor from behind the bars. His cheeks heated red, he keeps his lustful gaze fixed on the surface of the water, in which Susanna's lower body is probably reflected.
A magpie sits on a branch to the right above Susanna , behind which you can see an elder bush . A family of ducks swims in the river to the right behind the standing older man . In addition to the rose hedge, the narrow garden area with the bathing pool is also demarcated with a wooden fence. The posts of the entrance area are designed as Kariatydhermen . The entrance opens into a spacious garden landscape with a river, meadows and forest. A deer and a hind can be seen on the river bank in the background . On closer inspection, between some tree trunks, one recognizes the outlines of a city surrounded by water, which is most likely the lagoon city of Venice - Tintoretto's home - at the outer left edge of the picture .
The three figures are integrated into a triangular composition, the tip of which is slightly shifted from the central axis of the picture to the right.
interpretation
In the biblical story, the two elders Susanna lie in wait in her husband's garden and try to blackmail her into giving herself to them. She refuses, after which the men accuse her of adultery in court and achieve a guilty verdict with a death sentence, until the prophet Daniel finally reveals the truth and proves Susanna's innocence. The elders will be executed.
Tintoretto chooses a scene for his depiction of the subject in which Susanna seems so absorbed in her reflection that she does not notice the two voyeuristic and slanderous old men who lie in wait. In addition, the artist uses the Chiaroscuro technique to bring the act of Susanna so prominently into focus that the viewer himself becomes a voyeur.
In order to clarify the moral message contained in the biblical story, Tintoretto uses animal and color symbolism . The magpie stands for the impending slander, the ducks for loyalty, the roses for lust. The white of the elder blossoms and the objects next to Susanna stand for innocence and purity. The elder's red robe signals danger and lust . The stag stands for desire and lust, but its antlers can also be interpreted as a Christian symbol for the cross . Accordingly, the stag could also represent the prophet Daniel, who persistently searches for the truth in the course of the court process in order to prove Susanna's innocence.
The front tree trunk divides the painting into two parts that could be interpreted as two scenes. The outline-like depiction of Venice in the smaller left part of the picture suggests that the bathing Susanna in the larger right part symbolizes the lagoon city of Venice. In addition, the stag, as a symbol of desire, can be linked to the political events at the time of Tintoretto's painting: Around the middle of the 16th century, Venice was threatened from the outside by the Ottomans under Suleyman I , because since the sea battle of Preveza the Ottoman fleet the leading sea power in the Mediterranean. Süleyman's rule even extends into the area of what was once Babylon , where the biblical story portrayed by Tintoretto takes place. Accordingly, the two old men in the painting are symbolic of the Ottomans who desire beautiful, rich Venice.
With Susanna as a personified portrayal of Venice and the stag as a symbol of lust, the picture could also be interpreted as a hidden criticism of Venetian society in Tintoretto's time. The city's numerous prostitutes were made the scapegoats for venereal diseases such as syphilis , which struck Venice with deadly epidemics . Both in the biblical narrative and in Tintoretto's picture, Susanna is considered innocent. In a figurative sense, this could mean that Tintoretto does not denounce the prostitutes of Venice, but rather the men who - despite the threat of infection, persistently indulging in their lust - use their services, but shift the blame for sexually transmitted diseases on to the women.
history
Tintoretto's Susanna im Bade from 1555/56 is one of several works on the same subject from the artist's studio. One of the pictures is exhibited in the Louvre , in the Museo del Prado and in the NGA Washington .
JT: Susanna in the bath (c. 1550–1560), Louvre
JT: Susanna and the Elders (around 1552–1555), Museo del Prado
Domenico T. / JT workshop : Susanna, around 1580, NGA
literature
- Tom Nichols: Tintoretto - Tradition and Identity , pp. 91-94. Reaction Books, London 1999. ISBN 1861891202 . Book on Google (English)
- Herbert Willems (editor): Theatricalization of Society , Volume 1, Chapter Showing and Hiding by Thomas Schwietring, pp. 267–268. Springer-Verlag, 2009. ISBN 3531149229 . Book preview on google.
- Christina Leisering: Susanna and the Elderly Fall. LIT Verlag, Vienna 2008. ISBN 978-3-8258-1203-4 . Book preview on google
- Sigrid Dittrich & Lothar Dittrich : Lexicon of animal symbols. Animals as symbols in painting from the 14th to 17th centuries Century. Michael Imhof Verlag, 2005. ISBN 3937251189 .
Web links
- Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto - Susanna in the bath. Article by Karl Schütz on the Capella-Academica website.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Doppelganger. Press release of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, November 2012.
- ↑ Die Dame im Spiel by Ulrike Wörner, pp. 144–145. Waxmann Verlag, 2010.
- ↑ The large art dictionary by PW Hartmann. Retrieved July 31, 2014.
- ↑ Four ship giants defeated the Turkish fleet. Article by Berthold Seewald, Die Welt , December 4, 2013.
- ↑ The Sultan who brought horror and sex to Europe. Article by Florian Stark in Die Welt , September 6, 2016.
- ↑ City Guide Venice MM-City. Part 9: Prostitution in Venice from the 13th to the 18th century. - Fight against pimps and syphilis. by Michael Machatschek, Michael Müller-Verlag. 2014.