Susanna and the two old people (Stanzione)
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| Susanna and the two old people |
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| Massimo Stanzione , around 1645 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 152 × 178 cm |
| Joslyn Art Museum , Omaha |
Susanna and the two elderly is a painting by the Italian painter Massimo Stanzione, probably from the mid-1640s. The subject of the painting is the biblical story of Susanna in the bath , which is often taken up in painting . The painting is now in the Joslyn Art Museum , the most important art museum in the US state of Nebraska .
Background: the biblical story
According to Dan 13: 1-64 EU, there lived in Babylon a rich man named Jojakim , who was married to a beautiful and pious woman named Susanna. Two highly respected old judges frequented his house and fell in love with Susanna. In the Bible it says: Then the desire for her arose in them. Her thoughts got astray and her eyes went astray. ( Dan 13.9 EU )
They secretly ambushed the woman in the garden when she wanted to take a bath. They harassed them and tried to force them to sleep with them. They said they would otherwise accuse her of committing adultery with a young man. But Susanna stood firm, refused and screamed. The two old people also shouted loudly and had Susanna arrested and declared that they had surprised her in adultery. They then publicly tried the woman and sentenced her to death. When the sentence was about to be carried out, Daniel had divine inspiration and interrogated the two witnesses . He asked her independently under which tree Susanna is said to have cheated on her husband. While one said they did it under a cedar tree , the other said that an oak tree was the scene of the crime . Then the Jewish authorities and the listening people also recognized the two liars, and Susanna was released. But the two false judges were killed.
Representation at Stanzione
The Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione around 1586 was by Caravaggio and his successors, u. a. influenced by Simon Vouet and Jusepe de Ribera . Massimo Stanzione combined Caravaggio's dramatically illuminated and often brutally realistic scenes with the classical and lyrical painting of the Bolognese painters ( Guido Reni , Annibale Carracci , Lanfranco ). This can also be seen in Susanna and the two old people . The light falls from the left and illuminates the right half of the young woman's face and her bare upper body. She is busy drying her right foot. The two old people in the background can only see their bare backs. They stand in the semi-darkness between two tree trunks and seem to be busy discussing the final details of their approach.
Like Massimo Stanzione in his painting Susanna and the Two Elderly , most of the painters in depictions of Susanna in the bath have opted for a representation method in which the viewer can see the intimate beauty, while the two voyeurs largely obscure the view is.
literature
- Sebastian Schütze u. Thomas C. Willette: Massimo Stanzione. L'Opera completa, Electa, Naples 1992, cat. No. A86, pp. 76, 232f, 365
- Jacques Bonnet: The Bathers - Voyeurism in Western Art , Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-86601-088-8