Susannah and the Elders

The story of Susannah is found in Chapter 13 of the apocryphal Book of Daniel. To Renaissance artists it lent itself well for the exploration of female nudity within a biblical context. A married Hebrew woman in Babylon, Susannah was lusted over by two old men, who hid in the garden while she was bathing at a fountain. The men revealed themselves and said that she must either submit to them or they would spread a rumour that she was sleeping with a younger man. Susannah rejected their advances and the defamation and finally succeeded in demonstrating her purity and innocence.
This very rare print by the French engraver René Boyvin, with the beautiful naked body of Susannah and the lecherous expressions of the two old men, has an overtly erotic intensity. Especially her sculptural pose suggests a debt to Luca Penni (see also the following lot), although the existing literature suggested Rosso Fiorentino or Giulio Romano as the inventor of the composition.