Picasso’s Susanna: A Modern Way of Looking

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN

Picasso’s Susanna:

A Modern Way of Looking

Britiany Daugherty

AHIS 846

Art Since 1945

May 5, 2014

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The Susanna and the Elders narrative has been discussed by scholars in art, literature, and

religion from as far back as the second century CE until contemporary times, however the

highest frequency of the story dates from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Of the few

contemporary depictions, such as Thomas Hart Benton (1938), Lovis Corinth (1923) and David

Donaldson (1978), Pablo Picasso’s Susanna and the Elders (1955) is the most curious in regards

to the stylistic treatment and the depiction of Susanna’s body. One may also question why

Picasso painted this subject in his late life and career, transferring the subject matter into the

twentieth century (fig. 1). While there is precedent for the voyeur theme in the Renaissance and

Baroque depictions of Susanna, Picasso depicted his Susanna as never before, as the classic

reclining nude, layering this iconography onto Susanna and adding a new modern meaning.

Picasso’s painting of Susanna in his later life takes into account his mindset post world war, as

he appropriated the works of old masters and effectively shifted the focus of his art backwards to

a pre-war world. Picasso’s reaching back to the story of Susanna, that not only had Biblical

influences through the centuries, but was also extremely established in European Renaissance

painting, allows him to assert control over his own art and reject new post-war abstract subject

matter. Appropriating this theme allows him to gesture back to a period of classical influence as

well as maintain his early Cubist style, and effectively comment on the post-war world in a way

that indicates his desire to control time and bring back the pre-war world.

The thirteenth chapter of the Apocryphal Book of Daniel contains the story of Susanna,

wife of Joachim. Two elderly men, while in the garden of her home, spy on young and beautiful

Susanna. The two men make a plot to seduce her one day, and came upon her while she was

about to take a bath in her garden. When she sent her maidservant to fetch oil and ointments

they confronted her and propositioned her in that moment of her vulnerability. They threaten to

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accuse her of adulterous acts with a young man if she does not comply with them. Virtuous and

chaste, she refused them rather than dishonor herself, even with the threat of being stoned to

death as punishment. On trial she was found guilty, by way of torture, and appealed aloud to

God. Susanna’s prayers were answered in the form of the prophet Daniel, inspired to come to

her aid. He separated the two Elders and exposed the inconsistencies in their testimonies.

Consequently, the Elders were stoned to death for baring false witness instead of Susanna.1

The story of Susanna has repeatedly been portrayed in art throughout history from

Roman catacomb paintings to contemporary representations. However, the focus of the

narrative, as well as Susanna’s characterization has changed significantly over that time,

morphing from the ideal female virtue and chastity to the nude and provocative seductress as the

depiction has transformed from showing a Biblical moral tale to depicting a nude young woman

as an object of sexual desire.2 In the visual transformation of Susanna, Mieke Bal suggests that

the Susanna narrative initiated a seed of pornography for the later depictions that artists

capitalize on in order to use the narrative to depict the attractive nude.3 While the Biblical story

has moral, theological and judicial themes depicted in the Christian centuries, the male artists

that painted Susanna in the later centuries used the inspirational moral story as an excuse to

depict a beautiful young female as the subject of sexual opportunity.

Picasso’s 1955 Susanna and the Elders is virtually unknown and has not been well

discussed within the discourse of his numerous works, or within the considerations of other

1 ndr acocque, The Book of Daniel, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979), 13:1-46.

Nanette Salomon, “Judging rtemisia: a Baroque Woman in Modern rt History,” In The rtemisia Files:

Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, ed. Mieke Bal (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2005), 37.

2 Babette Bohn, "Rape and the Gendered Gaze: Susanna and the Elders in Early Modern Bologna," Biblical

Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 9, no. 3 (2001): 259.

3 Mieke Bal, "The Elders and Susanna," Biblical Interpretation 1, no. 1 (1993): 2.

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Susanna depictions. It seems that it did not surface until an exhibition in 2010, and it is now

currently in the Picasso Museum in Málaga, Spain as part of the permanent collection, on loan

from the private collection of Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. Picasso’s

Susanna is distinct from other depictions in several features. The most notable that Susanna is

depicted as a reclining nude, contrasting other well-known Susannas from the Renaissance and

Baroque periods, such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Rubens, Rembrandt, Lorenzo Lotto, Van Dyck,

and Tintoretto. While Picasso had great interest in the masters of art history, and the

appropriation of their works, his depiction of Susanna echoes none of the previous examples.4 In

addition, he removed the erotic garden scene that earlier artists elaborated. Susanna instead

reclines within an interior room, with little more than a shadowed vase to suggest the foliage of a

garden and without the Susanna title, this painting could easily be mistaken as one of the many

nude women he painted in this later period. The official title of Susanna and the Elders was

mistaken by authors Carsten-Peter Warncke and Timothy Burgard that have both labeled the

painting simply Reclining Nude or Great Reclining Nude the Voyeurs, respectfully in their

publications, not recognizing the Susanna association.5

Late in his life, post-world war Picasso looked back to traditional styles, rejected new

abstract ideas and appropriated the works of old masters as he attempted to control the world

around him through a safety in his painting. Post World War II, while the French galleries were

showcasing the tachisme, or abstract expressionism style of painters like Jean Fautrier and Jean

Dubuffet,6 Picasso turned back to art history by paraphrasing the works of old masters in his

4 Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso at 90: the Late Work, (New York: Putnam, 1971), 126.

5 Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo F. Walther, Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973, (Koln: Benedikt Taschen, 1991).

Timothy Anglin Burgard, "Picasso and Appropriation," Artbulletin the Art Bulletin 73, no. 3 (1991): 488.

6 Ian Chilvers, Harold Osborne and Denis Farr, The Oxford Dictionary of Art, (Oxford [Oxfordshire]; New York:

Oxford University Press, 1988), 686.

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liner, two-dimensional style.7 Picasso painted the way he always had before, with inner

compulsion and without regard to the changing world.8 He accomplished this by making the

appropriation of old masters a large body of his work, he “[began] with an idea and then it

[turned] into something else,” in his own words.9 To him, a painter was essentially “a collector

who wants to acquire a collection by painting other people’s paintings that he admires.”10

So,

while post war trends like tachisme became popular in some circles, Picasso in his seventies at

this time continued with his signature style, pulling in the subjects of old masters in a reversion

to the traditional, leaning back on the safe, rather than latching onto a new trend. Within his

“collection” were the appropriations of Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656), Manet’s Le Déjeuner

sur l’Herbe (1863), and Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Toilet (1654) that he repainted in his

own two-dimensional style. He also painted the mythological Rape of the Sabines, suggesting

that he also reverted to the influence of a classical phase, where mythological and Biblical

narratives would have been popular. With his study of the old masters, Picasso would have also

been familiar with painting of Susanna either by Rubens, Guido Reni and Rembrandt, either

first-hand or from reproductions.11

The Susanna paintings Picasso would have been familiar with follow a specific

Renaissance-style composition that differs from early Christian depiction. In the centuries

before the sixteenth, images of Susanna were sporadic, or perhaps now lost, but when the

7 Gallwitz, Picasso at 90, 126.

8 Alfred H. Barr, Picasso, Fifty Years of His Art, (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1946),11.

9 “Picasso.” Le Point, no. 42 (Oct. 1952), quoted in Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso at 90: the Late Work (New York:

Putnam, 1971), 114.

10 Ibid.

11 cile odefroy, Marilyn Mc ully, Pablo Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga and Fundaci n lmine y Bernard

Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Pablo Picasso: 43 Works, ([Madrid] [Málaga]: Fundaci n lmine y Bernard Ruiz-

Picasso para el rte Museo Picasso Málaga, 1 ), 202.

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narrative becomes heavily frequent in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the focus has shifted

to Susanna’s bath as the focus of the narrative. In earlier catacomb depictions, several focal

moments of the narrative are represented, often in one visual statement. Susanna is depicted in

the garden with the Elders, but also on trial and in the orant pose pleading to the Lord for

salvation, or praising the Lord for her rescue. Daniel is also depicted in these, appropriately

since he is the prophet and hero of the story. In the Renaissance depictions, the artist only

portrays the moment of Susanna’s bath, and the male prophet Daniel is never present.12

With the

shift in the focal scene, and Susanna’s characterization, that germ of pornography presents itself

as an opportunity for voyeurism that developed in the sixteenth through eighteenth century

examples. While Picasso would have been familiar with this compositional style for the Susanna

narrative, he did not appropriate any particular artist’s depiction; he instead altered the

composition to include the reclining nude iconography.

The nude depiction of Susanna invites the male gaze of power and control on the female

figure. Applying the male gaze to the Susanna narrative further presents her as an object of

desire, altering the ways of viewing the female nude. Laura Mulvey suggests that the male

always controls the gaze, giving power to the male and removing power from the female.13

With

the application of the male gaze to the Susanna story that visually developed in the sixteenth

century onward emphasis was taken away from Susanna’s Biblical importance as an Old

Testament prefiguration of the New Testament Christ. Her significance is diminished as an

archetype such as the likes of Jonah and Daniel, and instead the male gaze allows for the female

12

Bal, "The Elders and Susanna," 2.

13 Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

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heroine to become the passive object of erotic pleasure.14

For Susanna, she is an object of the

male gaze of the Elders as well as the gaze of the male artist that paints her narrative. Picasso

takes that power structure a step further by depicting Susanna not as her narrative intends, but

instead in the reclining nude posture that relates to the Venus archetype, another figure of sexual

objectification.

A further stylistic consideration by Picasso considers that, within the Italian Renaissance

and Baroque pictorial tradition that developed, more often than not Susanna was aware of the

Elder’s presence at the time of the painting, however, some painters opted to depict the unaware

Susanna, further adding to the voyeurism theme. This is the case with Tintoretto’s 1555 Susanna

and the Elders that presents the intrusive lustful old men spying on Susanna from a deep garden

setting, her naked body prominently lit as the object of sexual opportunity (fig. 2).15

The

tradition continues in the seventeenth century examples of uercino’s 1617 Susanna and the

Elders (fig. 3), and in Rembrandt’s 1647 Susanna and the Elders (fig. 4). These depictions,

assume that the paintings are structured “male fantasies of voyeurism.”16

uercino’s Susanna

hangs in Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado, accessible to Picasso. By appropriating the theme,

Picasso participates in this historical pictorial tradition of Susannas through the centuries, and by

altering the composition to include the Venus reference, that also has a specific pictorial history

through the centuries beginning in the sixteenth century, he presents a contemporary opportunity

for voyeurism. In combining the two themes, he confuses the viewer’s understanding of the

14

Shohini Chaudhuri, Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa De Lauretis, Barbara Creed,

(London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 31.

15 Robert Hahn, "Caught in the Act: Looking at Tintoretto's Susanna," The Massachusetts Review 45, no. 4 (Winter,

2004): 633-647, 634.

16 Chaudhuri, Feminist Film Theorists, 31.

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Susanna originally presented in the Biblical text and introduces the Venus iconography into her

depiction, changing her meaning with the power he possesses in his paintbrush.

The title of the painting, as different as the composition may be, also presents an

opportunity to view it within the discourse of viewing religious and mythological nudes, such as

Diana. While the Museo Picasso Málaga exhibition catalogue identifies the painting as Susanna

and the Elders, the fact that other scholars have titled it Reclining Nude with Voyeurs speaks to

the lineage of the subject matter that reaches back to classical mythology, which Picasso was

familiar with and appropriated in many of his mythological repaintings. Similar to the Susanna

story, the Roman mythological Diana is a chaste hunter and goddess surprised by the mortal

hunter Actaeon while taking a bath. In embarrassment, she turns him into a stag and his own

dogs tear him apart. While Actaeon and the Elders are punished for their voyeurism, the

depiction of Diana’s story shifted in emphasis over time, same as Susanna’s did.

Like the multi-scene iconography of the early Christian Susanna depictions that

emphasized the entire story and did not only focus on Susanna’s bath, those images of the Diana

narrative made in antiquity focused on ctaeon’s death while later fifteenth century depictions

arouse sexuality by focusing on the moment Diana is surprised at her bath.17

A later eighteenth

century example by François Boucher, Diana Resting after her Bath, emphasizes Diana’s bath

without any indication of the mythological story (fig. 5). Rembrandt also emphasized Diana’s

nudity in his Diana bathing with her nymphs with the stories of Actaeon and Callisto, 1635, (fig.

6) where he depicts the unsuspecting Diana, much like uercino’s unaware Susanna. In both

Susanna and Diana themes the moral purposing of the Biblical and mythological become

17

Luke Roman and Monica Roman, Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology, (New York: Facts on File,

2010), 10.

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secondary to the opportunity to display female sexuality, creating the themes of voyeurism

embedding within these examples that later, contemporary artists like Picasso follow.

Picasso further introduces the artist/model theme within the depiction of Susanna, a

theme in painting that has also existed traditionally through the centuries. Of the subjects of old

masters, the relationship between (male) artist and (female) model is the most represented

traditionally. In 1954, he began focusing on a series of drawings concentrated on the theme of

painter and model, dealing with “everything that might happen between the painter and the girl

or woman posing as a model but nonetheless made of flesh and blood.”18

These drawings are

examples that would be preliminary to Picasso’s large paintings of nudes in the next few years,

Susanna included.19

He also continued his figurative art, painting the deconstructed, geometric

and distorted human body. Kathleen Morand suggests that, with each new advance in abstract

art, like that new advance seen in this post-war era, there is an equal reinforcement in the

figurative movement.20

In this time of extreme change and movement in the modern world,

Picasso reached back to traditional iconography and continued to paint the “extreme distortion of

the human figure” to which he was familiar.21

Picasso’s 1955 Susanna is just one of many large-scale horizontal canvases (80 x 190 cm)

he created that summer while being filmed in Nice for Le Mystére Picasso.22

In most elements,

she is more akin to all of his other reclining nudes than to the historical Susannas that existed.

18

Pablo Picasso, Margarida Cortadella and Museo Picasso, Picasso: War & Peace. ([Barcelona]: Instiitut de

Cultura: Museu Picasso, 2004), 52.

19 Gallwitz, Picasso at 90,152.

20 Kathleen Morand, "Post-War Trends in the 'École De Paris'," The Burlington Magazine 102, no. 686, Modern

Painting (May, 1960): 187.

21 Ibid.

22 Godefroy, McCully, Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga and Fundaci n lmine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el

Arte, Pablo Picasso: 43 Works, 199.

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Depicting her in this way, the same as other nameless reclining nudes removes her power and

purpose as a Biblical prefiguration. Within the lines and colors of her representation it is clear

that she was a continuation of his painting style, various converging elements are represented

from his other works from the same and preceding years. The similarities of the 1954 Jacqueline

with her hands (fig. 7) to the 1955 Susanna do not include the female nude, reclining, open pose

or voyeurism. Instead, it is in the geometry of her crossed leg that echoes that of Jacqueline’s

geometrically clothed body. The red and blues of Jacqueline’s interior are echoed in the walls of

Susanna’s interior scene. The patterning beneath Jacqueline signals the separation of the floor,

creating space; a similar pattern is used on the fabric beneath Susanna’s reclining body, which

associates her with other reclining nudes that were generally on beds, and separates her from

Jacqueline who sits enclosed on the floor.

While Picasso kept the same color and linear elements that trace back to his early Cubist

and even Surrealist styles, he presents two different painter-model conditions. He painted these

within the period that he was considering the painter-model dynamic, and the biggest

dissimilarity in these two paintings is the pose of the body that creates an open or a closed space

for the viewer. The reclining pose of Susanna leaves her body open and inviting viewers to look

at, like any other reclining nude, while Jacqueline’s clasped hands and tightly contained, clothed

body close her off from viewing, her large unblinking eye wards the viewer away even, while

Susana’s closed eyes allow for easier access to her naked body. This differentiation in the

meaning of these women could be Picasso’s familiarity with Jacqueline, his partner at the time,

which creates a painter-model circumstance that leads him to shield her body, to claim her as his

own. Unlike the Susanna that is a model at a distance, the reclining nude subject within the

discourse of the painter-model theme has traditionally created an “erotic tension between the

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painter and the model.”23

The male gaze traditionally objectifies the reclining nude; a nude

woman is provided, exposed and stretched out, before the (male) viewer’s eyes. ssociating his

Susanna with the reclining nude, who is available to be looked at, removes the purpose of the

original narrative and changes Susanna’s characterization from the chaste, virtuous Biblical

prefiguration of Christ to an objectified archetype of Venus.

There is an even more striking similarity in the sculptured face and commanding profile

of the two figures. The facial features of the two figures are similar; however, the expressions

serve two different purposes. Like Jacqueline, Susanna’s face seems to be made of stone, her

nose long and straight and Picasso highlights the facial features with bright yellows and whites

on Susanna and muted blues and whites on Jacqueline. However, the difference in purpose is in

the gaze of the two figures. While they both do not look out at the viewer, Susanna’s gaze is less

penetrating than Jacqueline’s as Susanna gazes downward, while Jacqueline’s profile includes an

enlarged eye that “will blink at nothing.”24

Unlike Jacqueline’s unblinking eye, Susanna’s

downcast eyes are associated with the iconography of the reclining nude that gained popularity in

sixteenth century Renaissance paintings (fig. 8). Susanna’s closed eyes, as well as her arm

resting on her head, call to mind iorgione’s 1510 The Sleeping Venus and add another meaning

to the narrative that distracts from the Biblical purposes (fig. 9).

The twisted and awkward body of the reclining Susanna also relates to Picasso’s other

reclining nudes. After 1954 Picasso’s nude drawings eventually “free themselves from all

private ties,” according to author Klaus Gallwitz.25

Moving away from depictions of his partner

Jacqueline, Picasso removes those personal ties and his large nudes fill canvasses with their

23

Gallwitz, Picasso at 90, 152.

24 Picasso, Cortadella and Museo Picasso, Picasso, 54-55.

25 Gallwitz, Picasso at 90, 152.

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distorted and geometric bodies. Gallwitz goes on to note that all the pictures of the nudes have at

least one thing in common: “the body is usually seen directly from above and brought into the

foreground plane” 26

The perspective of her body creates an awkwardness in her features. An

example from a few years later, but within the same discourse of giant female nudes, is the 1959

Nude under a Pine Tree (fig. 10). In this, the nude has become further geometrical, beyond the

point of Susanna in 1955, but with the same perspective. With the top view, the right breast is

recognizable but the left breast lies on the ground, like a large round orange. Most of Susanna’s

figurative body is still recognizable; however, there is some distortion and awkwardness in the

breasts and the legs. The left breast is displayed prominently on her torso, with the erect nipple

in plain sight of the two voyeurs behind. However, her right breast has fallen to the ground and

lies down as maybe a natural breast would when a female lies down. What is left in the middle

is a bare torso that almost looks Amazonian in nature, with only one breast if the viewer were to

overlook the second breast nearer to the ground. That gigantic Amazonian feeling is further

enhanced by the large size of the canvas (80 x 109 cm), that became popular at this time, and the

figure within that dominates the canvas, with her raised arm and right leg almost touching the top

of the canvas and her body that extends almost the entire width.27

In these, large reclining nudes the limbs are often depicted the same, the arm over the

head and the legs tangled together. With these there is often a reoccurring motif of the arm

resting on the head, this harkens back to iorgione’s Sleeping Venus and is then common in the

Venus theme that follows.28

The placement of the arm above the head is also seen in Picasso’s

26

Ibid.

27 odefroy, Mc ully, Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga and Fundaci n lmine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el

Arte, Pablo Picasso: 43 Works, 199.

28 Gallwitz, Picasso at 90: the Late Work, 61.

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1955, Great Reclining Nude with Crossed Arms 2, painted at the same time as the Susanna (fig.

11). Both arms of Great Reclining Nude are crossed above her head, similar to Susanna’s

crossed arms, which does slightly differ from the Sleeping Venus that raises only one arm behind

her head, allowing her to protect herself, covering her privates with her other arm. The Great

Reclining Nude crosses her legs in such a way that also cover her vagina, with just a small

shadow to indicate its presence. Susanna’s legs are crossed unstably, with her large right leg,

covered in yellow rings like a thick tree truck, covering nothing. Instead, she is exposed, but

there is not the indication of a vagina in the exposed area, what is there appears to be stitches

with the thread hanging down her backside. Like the reclining Venus, and the sixteenth century

Susannas, Picasso has kept with the general compositional convention to turn Susanna towards

the audience and hide her privates from at least the Elders that spy on her. The stitching may

indicate a mechanism for her to show herself as closed off, it is not viewable to the Elders

behind, but it may symbolically harken back to the Biblical narrative that suggests she does not

give in to the temptation of the Elders, but is instead chaste.

While Picasso painted many of his nudes in nature, like Nude under a Pine Tree, he

removed Susanna from the garden, placing her in an interior scene. His deviation from the

Biblical narrative and choice to place Susanna interiorly asserts his control, as a male, over

women. In the modern world of female advancement and rights, women gained the right to vote

in France in 1944, Picasso purposefully places Susanna within a domestic setting. This

compositional choice would not be as telling of his feelings, since he painted other nudes in

gardens, but Susanna was meant to be in the garden. Every depiction, from early Christian

catacombs to Renaissance paintings, emphasizes the narrative in the garden. The examples

Picasso would have been familiar with were garden scenes, but his movement of Susanna to the

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domestic speaks to the social atmosphere of change he was trying to avoid. He essentially used

Susanna as a vehicle of resistance to the change in the post-war world, as a return to the classical,

to a time when women were in the home, a time of male dominance in the home and in the

generally within every society.

Of the elements within the painting, nothing points to the Susanna theme more than the

two voyeur heads included in the background. Without these, the theme would scarcely exist,

and it is because of them, even with the confusion of the title, that this reclining nude is situated

within the Susanna discourse. According to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, unlike the woman’s

presence that expresses her own attitude, the presence of the man is dependent on the power in

which he embodies within the frame; if it is large then he is prominent.29

Given the large size of

the canvas, the male heads are sizeable as well, and exist outside Susanna’s awareness as she

stares downward. They are also prominent in the fact that they are not hidden behind anything,

not as Tintoretto hid his Elders within the garden, or Rembrandt hid them within the shadows.

With the Susanna and the Elders title, the two voyeurs are easily understood as the Elders either

perhaps staring in from a window, or they could be a painting on the back wall. Without the

title, Burgard, who identifies the painting as 1955 Reclining Nude, explains the two men in terms

of another of Picasso’s appropriation.

Of the masters Picasso appropriated, his contemporary Henri Matisse was prominent.

Burgard suggests that the white voyeur figure is a representation of Henri Matisse that passed in

1954. Following Matisse’s death Picasso may have been fighting against time and change,

against his own old age as he watched his friends and even his father pass on. The many nudes

he painted around 1954 and beyond, Susanna included harken back to Matisse’s Blue Nude from

29

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (London: British Broadcasting Corp.: Penguin Books, 1972), 45.

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1908 (fig. 12). Upon the passing of his friend, Picasso also appropriated Matisse’s models, one

of which is the subject of the painting, and Matisse is now voyeuristically looking in on the

‘voluptuous nude model’ that was once his.30

Burgard also explains the black bearded figure as

representative of Picasso’s also passed father, Don Jose, and both figures are suggestive of death

and are said to be looking from outside the studio window.31

Even if the true nature of the

voyeurs is Matisse and Don Jose, it does not stop the suggestion of the Elders in the Susanna

narrative, given the iconography of the story.

In conclusion, Picasso may have painted the 1955 Susanna and the Elders as another way

of appropriating the old masters of art history in several ways. This painting is an example of

Picasso holding onto the figurative, pre-war past rather than embracing the contemporary

abstract, post-war present. He was also turning back to classical influence, back to his own early

Cubist style, and fighting against post-war “progress” like women’s rights. He may also have

been fighting against time, against death and old age as he watched many of his loved ones pass

on. Susanna’s existence continues the discourse of the theme into the twentieth century, adding

new layers of meaning. Elements of Susanna have been adapted from not only Picasso’s other

works, such as the 1954 Jacqueline, but also from other common themes used by the old

masters. Picasso was aware of other Susannas from the Renaissance period, such as

Rembrandt’s, but instead appropriated the iconography of the reclining nude as with iorgione’s

Sleeping Venus. The addition of this theme to Susanna further divorces her characterization

away from the Biblical purpose and instead allows Picasso the control to make a new visual

statement that speaks to his own contemporary world.

30

Burgard, "Picasso and Appropriation," 488.

31 Ibid.

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Figure 1. Pablo Picasso, Susanna and the Elders, 1955, oil on canvas, 80 x 190 cm, courtesy of FABA (Museo

Picasso Málaga)

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Figure 2. Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, c. 1555, 147 x 194 cm, (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria).

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Figure 3. Guercino, Susanna and the Elders, 1617, 175 x 207 cm, (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain).

Figure 4. Rembrandt, Susanna and the Elders, 1647, 76.6 x 92.7 cm, (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).

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Fig. 5. François Boucher, Diana Resting after her Bath, 1742, oil on canvas, 56 x 73 cm, (Louvre Museum, Paris).

Figure 6. Rembrandt, Diana bathing with her nymphs with the stories of Actaeon and Callisto, 1635, 73.5 x 93.5 cm,

(Museum Wasserburg Anholt).

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Figure 7. Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline with her hands clasped, Vallauris, June 03, 1954, oil on canvas, 116 x 88.5 cm,

(Museé Picasso, Paris).

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Figure 8. Picasso, detail of Susanna’s face.

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Figure 9. Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, 1510, 108.5 × 175 cm, (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden).

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Figure 10. Pablo Picasso, Nude under a Pine Tree, January 20, 1959, oil on canvas, 76 x 109.2 in. (The Art Institute

of Chicago).

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Figure 11. Pablo Picasso, Great Reclining Nude with Crossed Arms 2, 1955, 80 x 190 cm.

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Figure 12. Henri Matisse, B lue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), oil on canvas, 92 x 140 cm, (Baltimore Museum of Art).