(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
Susanna and the Elders,
oil on panel, 50 x 71.5 cm, framed

The present painting is a considerably modified version by Rubens’s workshop of a composition by the master that is now in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich (inv. no. 317). Rubens himself altered the composition of the Munich Susanna at an early stage, which now shows the view of a distant landscape instead of the original cloak wrapped around the figure. The present painting could either refer to an earlier stage of the Munich version or might vary another composition by Rubens. A further possibility would be that Rubens himself outlined the preliminary drawing on the present panel, which was subsequently completed by a workshop collaborator. This assumption is corroborated by an etching by P. Spruyt that is inscribed ‘P. P. Rubens pinxit’ which does not follow the Munich version, but is based on the present composition.

The provenance of the Munich painting contains a highly revealing detail. Until recently it was believed to have come from the collection of the Duc de Richelieu. However, his inventory describes a Susanna who protects her chest by crossing her arms in front of it, as does the figure in our painting, whereas in the Munich painting she stretches out her right arm (cf. B. Teyssèdre, ‘Une Collection française de Rubens au XVIIIème Siècle: le Cabinet du Duc de Richelieu, décrit par Roger de Piles’, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, VIth series, LXII, 1963, pp. 241ff.).

In 2002, Konrad Renger and Claudia Denk reported that infrared reflectography had exposed that the figure in the original conception of the Munich version had partly been dressed and that her right arm had been bent in the same way as in the present version and in the version in the Richelieu Collection described in the 18th century. This alteration must have been made at a very early point in time, when the painting was still in the workshop (cf. K. Renger and C. Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek, Munich, 2002, p. 294, under cat. no. 317). The Munich painting can therefore not have been in the Richelieu collection. The Richelieu picture must have been another version – probably either the present or a lost variant that is still unknown (cf. R. d’Hulst and M. Vandenven, Rubens – The Old Testament, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 3, London 1989, pp. 219/20). The Corpus Rubenianum mentions several variants of the Munich painting, which, however, do not include the present composition, whose painterly quality in the rendering of Susanna, the drapery, and the little dog is remarkable. The present variant may therefore repeat Rubens’s original composition, although it also fundamentally differs from the Munich version. For example, the pilaster appearing on the right-hand side of the well in the Munich painting has been moved farther into the centre in the present version, and the herm’s head crowning it here is missing in the Munich painting. This detail appears both in Spruyt’s etching and in a smaller painted version that is closest to the present composition. It is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (inv. no. 91.26.4), where it has been assigned to the ‘workshop of Peter Paul Rubens’ (see W. Bode, ‘Alte Kunstwerke in den Sammlungen der Vereinigten Staaten’, in: Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, n.p., no. 1, 1895, p. 17, as a workshop copy, and W. Liedtke, Flemish Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 213–216, vol. 2, pl. 81, as workshop of Rubens).

Additional pictures
1) Etching by P. Spruyts
2) A variant of the present composition, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, (as Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens)