Susanna

Susanna depicts the chaste heroine of the Book of Daniel bathing in a garden while two elders of Babylon secretly spy on her, a prelude to their false accusation. Domenico Tintoretto, the eldest son working in the busy studio of the great Venetian master Jacopo Tintoretto, rendered the biblical scene with the glowing colour and rich brushwork of the late Venetian manner. Painted in the 1580s, the work shows the younger artist absorbing his father’s dramatic energy while moving toward the softer, more pictorial sensibility of the turn of the century.