Susanna and the Elders

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, R.6; lower centre, by Hofstede de Groot, T 98 190 / h 202 / b 188; lower right (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), deGr 1167
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Light foxing throughout

Provenance

...; collection Leonard Marius Beels van Heemstede (1825-82), Amsterdam;¹Note RMA. his widow, Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede, née jonkvrouwvan Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam;²Note RMA. by whom donated to the museum (L. 2228), with an unknown number of other drawings, 1898

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1898-A-3689

Credit line: Gift of A.H. Beels van Heemstede-van Loon

The artist

Biography

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)

After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.

Entry

According to the apocryphal story (Daniel 13:1-27), the beautiful young Susanna, the wife of Joachim, was accosted while bathing by two lecherous old men who propositioned her and threatened to accuse her of adultery with a (non-existent) young man if she did not accede to their demands. This drawing shows Susanna wincing at the suggestion and covering her breasts with her arm and her pubic area with a cloth. The man wearing a turban lays his hand on her shoulder (in an almost avuncular manner) while also warning her with his raised finger of the consequences of her failure to accommodate their wishes. The outstretched arm of his companion in the tall hat was drawn twice by Rembrandt, who covered the uppermost version with opaque white, which has now oxidized.

This subject, which has a pictorial tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, was portrayed by Rembrandt in two paintings and several drawings. One of the drawings, in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 5296),³Benesch, no. 448; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Ostfildern/Berlin 2006, no. 18. is a copy of a painting of 1614 by his teacher, Pieter Lastman, which is also preserved in Berlin, in the Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 1719).⁴H. Bevers, K. Kleinert and C. Laurenze-Landsberg, Rembrandts Berliner Susanna und die Beiden Alten_: Die Schaffung eines Meisterwerks_, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett; Gemäldegalerie) 2015, p. 16, fig. 5. This drawn copy was the starting point for Rembrandt’s involvement with this theme. In an upright painting in the Mauritshuis in The Hague (inv. no. 147),⁵RRP III (1989), no. A 117: RRP VI (2015), no. 144 (1636). Rembrandt took the figure of Susanna out of context and portrayed her almost on her own at her bath, although we do catch a glimpse of one of the elders lurking in the bushes. This painting is dated 1636.⁶The date, whose last digit is ambiguous, was previously read as 1636, 1637 or 1638, but a dated copy by Willem de Poorter of 1636 proves that the first interpretation is correct; www.rembrandtdatabase.org/Rembrandt/ painting/2926/susanna/bibliography. Rembrandt’s second painting of the subject, also in the Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 828E), is horizontal and bears the date 1647.⁷RRP V (2011), no. V 1; RRP VI (2015), no. 213 (1647); H. Bevers, K. Kleinert and C. Laurenze-Landsberg, Rembrandts Berliner Susanna und die Beiden Alten_: Die Schaffung eines Meisterwerks_, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett; Gemäldegalerie) 2015, passim. This work, however, was probably started much earlier, since a directly related pen sketch for one of the elders, in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (inv. no. 357-4),⁸Benesch, no. 157 (as c. 1637); A. Blankert et al., Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria)/Canberra (National Gallery of Australia) 1997-98, no. 80; M. Royalton-Kisch and P. Schatborn, ‘The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, II: The List’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, pp. 323-46, no. 38. can be dated to the end of the 1630s by virtue of its media and draughtsmanship. Another drawing connected with the painting of 1647, a study for the figure of Susanna, also in the Kupferstichkabinett (inv. no. KdZ 5264),⁹Benesch, no. 590; H. Bevers, Rembrandt: Die Zeichnungen im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, kritischer Katalog, coll. cat. Ostfildern/Berlin 2006, no. 27. is likewise dated 1647, and the investigations of the RRP made it clear that it, too, is a preparatory study for the final version of the picture rather than a reiteration of it, as once thought.¹⁰M. Royalton-Kisch and P. Schatborn, ‘The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, II: The List’, Master Drawings 49 (2011), no. 3, pp. 323-46, no. 56.

The precise way in which the present drawing and another sheet in the Kupferstichkabinett – a vertical pen sketch of Susanna and the Elders (inv. no. KdZ 1130)¹¹Benesch, no. 977; Sumowski, Drawings, VIII (1984), no. 166-bx, attributed this drawing to Nicolaes Maes, incorrectly in my opinion; Holm Bevers also harbours some doubts about the attribution to Rembrandt; H. Bevers, K. Kleinert and C. Laurenze-Landsberg, Rembrandts Berliner Susanna und die Beiden Alten_: Die Schaffung eines Meisterwerks_, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett; Gemäldegalerie) 2015, pp. 55-56, fig. 18 (as attributed to Rembrandt, c. 1655). – are related to the paintings of this subject remains an open question. On stylistic grounds, both drawings must be dated after the completion of the Berlin painting in 1647. They are reversed variants of both of the earlier painted compositions. The elders are similar in type, but in the two drawings they are on Susanna’s left and her body is in profile to the right, and she turns to look back at them over her shoulder instead of out at the viewer. The Berlin composition is somewhat further removed from Rembrandt’s other representations. The scene, portrayed from the front at an oblique angle, shows the elders forcing themselves onto Susanna from the rear while she stands in the water up to above her knees. She is closed off by a stone wall to her right and left, so there is no means of escape. By choosing a vertical format, the figures are placed in the middle of the scene, around a central axis. The open area on the right side of the Amsterdam drawing strengthens the concentration of the figures, a feature often found in Rembrandt’s drawings.

The dating of these two additional drawings of the Susanna theme is a matter of debate. Although the present drawing was traditionally dated around 1647, to coincide with the Berlin painting, two early authors suggested a dating of circa 1650.¹²H. Kauffmann, ‘Rembrandts Berliner Susanna’, Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 45 (1924), pp. 72-80; W. Weisbach, Rembrandt, Berlin/Leipzig 1926. In my opinion, the sheet, with its refined handling, restrained but varied pen work and shading by means of delicate parallel hatching with a half-dry pen, does indeed have more in common with works from the beginning of the 1650s, such as The Crucifixion in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inv. no. 2006),¹³Benesch, no. 924. especially the area on the left with the men with raised arms. Our own David Hearing the News of Uriah’s Death of circa 1650 (inv. no. RP-T-1930-10), with its fine lines and shadows and the restricted number of broad accents, is also similar. Although there are some strong accents to be seen in the Susanna and the Elders, they are not as broad or as heavy as are typical of drawings from the second half of the 1640s – for example, the Studies for the Sick Woman in the ‘Hundred Guilder Print’ (inv. no. RP-T-1964-127(R)), Daniel in the Lions’ Den (inv. no. RP-T-1930-17) and Cottage with White Paling among Trees (inv. no. RP-T-1981-1). The other Berlin drawing of Susanna and the Elders is also datable later, to the mid-1650s.

The shaded passages in grey wash, on the other hand, are a later addition, as is also the case in other drawings (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1930-63, RP-T-1901-A-4523 and RP-T-1930-20).

Peter Schatborn, 2017

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1167 (c. 1647); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 262 (c. 1647); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 52 (1647); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 592 (c. 1647); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. The Hague 1985, no. 36; J. Lloyd Williams et al., Rembrandt’s Women, exh. cat. Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001, no. 116; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 98-99, fig. 94; H. Bevers, K. Kleinert and C. Laurenze-Landsberg, Rembrandts Berliner Susanna und die Beiden Alten: Die Schaffung eines Meisterwerks, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett; Gemäldegalerie) 2015, p. 53, fig. 14; B. Magnusson, Dutch Drawings in Swedish Public Collections, exh. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2018, under no. 324.

Citation

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Susanna and the Elders, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28554

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