Susanna and the Elders

This drawing, obviously by the same hand as the following lot, recalls in reverse the composition of the famous panel, also depicting Susanna and the Elders, in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. 828 E; see E. van de Wetering, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, V, Small-Scale History Paintings, Dordrecht, 2011, no. 1, ill.; and H. Bevers, K. Kleinert und C. Laurenze-Landsberg, Rembrandts Berliner Susanna und die beiden Alten. Die Schaffung eines Meisterwerks, exhib. cat., Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 2015). Although Rembrandt dated the picture in 1647, he started working on it almost a decade earlier, around 1638, but the drawings presented here bear an even earlier date. In style, they recall a similarly small sketch of the Adoration of the Shepherds, dated to the first half of the 1650s, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. 5036; see O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, second edition, London, 1973, III, no. 580, fig. 749, as Rembrandt; and M. Royalton-Kisch, The Drawings of Rembrandt. A Revision of Otto Benesch’s Catalogue Raisonné, online publication, rembrandtcatalogue.net, no. Benesch 0580 (accessed December 2023)). Probably from the second half of the 1650s is drawing of somewhat similar style, also depicting Susanna and the Elders, in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (inv. KdZ 1130; see Benesch, op. cit., V, no. 977, fig. 1259; and H. Bevers, Zeichnungen der Rembrandtschule im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett. Kritischer Katalog, Dresden, 2018, no. 102, as attributed to Karel van Savoy). Despite the year inscribed and the compositional proximity of the current sheet with the Berlin painting, the two drawings may thus be of approximately 1650-1660, or even later.

We are grateful to Martin Royalton-Kisch for his help in cataloguing this and the following drawing.