Susanna And The Elders, Giovanni Segala (1663 - 1720)

Giovanni Segala (Venice 1663 - Murano 1720)
Susanna and the Eers

oil on canvas (155 x 127 cm - with frame 174 x 146 cm)

This delightful, large-scale painting illustrates the story of Susanna, recounted in the pages of the Old Testament (Daniel, XIII): the faithful wife of a wealthy Jew, she is molested while bathing in the garden of her palace by two lecherous old judges who threaten to denounce her as unfaithful if she does not grant them her favours.

The woman does not give in to blackmail and faces trial for the false accusations of adultery; about to be stoned to death, she is saved by the prophet Daniel, behind whose intervention lies divine intervention, which will expose the two old men as liars. Here we see the moment when the two men appear behind the scantily clad young woman, who is in a state of shock as she tries to hide her nakedness with her arm and a white cloth, alluding to her purity.

The iconographic theme of “Susanna and the Elders”, which apparently boasted moralistic intentions, became very fashionable from the Baroque period onwards due to its obvious erotic implications, duly masked by its biblical origin, and its intrinsic exaltation of marital fidelity and chastity.

The representation of the half-naked Susanna was therefore often a pretext to satisfy the clients' desire for female nude subjects: the twist of her body is beautiful here, painted as a naked but innocent triumph of white and opulent flesh.

The painting is the work of the Venetian painter Giovanni Segala (Venice 1663–1720), considered during his lifetime to be one of the leading exponents of Venetian painting at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.

With his light colours and elegantly subdued painting style with large velvety surfaces, he was a proto-eighteenth-century precursor of Venetian painting: after initially studying under Pietro Vecchia, his sources of inspiration were Antonio Bellucci and Gregorio Lazzarini.

At the end of the 1680s, he achieved such fame and prestige that he was hired by the Marquises Von Platen to decorate Linden Castle in Hanover, Germany, creating several works that are now preserved in the Historisches Museum in the same city.

The characteristics of the work, a perfect example of his style, allow us to place it in an advanced stage of his career, when he favoured a delicate colour palette based on light and bright tones, as well as transparent colours and a soft luminosity.