Object number1994.10.1
Susanna and the Elders
Datec. 1635
Artist
Christoffel Jegher
(Flemish, 1596 - 1652/53)
after
Peter Paul Rubens
(Flemish, 1577-1640)
CultureFlemish
MediumWoodcut on paper
DimensionsImage: 17 5/16 × 22 7/16 in. (44 × 57 cm)
Sheet: 17 5/16 × 22 13/16 in. (44 × 58 cm)
Matted: 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm)
Sheet: 17 5/16 × 22 13/16 in. (44 × 58 cm)
Matted: 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Francis Woolsey and Helen Silkman Bronson, class of 1924, Fund
On View
Not on viewPeriod17th c
Classification(s)
SignedSigned (at bottom center edge): Christoffel Jegher Sc
InscribedInscribed (at bottom left center edge): P P Rubidelim O2 exc C V M PRIVILEGIIS; (verso): LeBelI S.C. 11963
Catalogue raisonnéHollstein 1BibliographyMundy, James, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center: Vassar College The History and Collection (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007), p. 43 repr.
Dutuit VI: 37, 36; Hollstein 1;
Tostmann, Oliver. Paper, Color, Line: European Master Drawings from the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2025, p. 100Vassar Exhibitions
DescriptionThis woodcut demonstrates a collaboration between the skillful printmaker Jegher and the pre-eminent painter of the seventeenth century in northern Europe, Peter Paul Rubens. Their collaboration arose through Rubens’s work with the Plantin Press in Antwerp, where Jegher was employed as a wood- cut designer for the press’s books. The subject of Susanna spied on by the two elders comes from the apocryphal Book of Daniel. When she refuses their advances, they slander her. It was a theme used in art throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a moral cautionary tale about the evil of bearing false witness. However, in painting, it also provided an opportunity to present a blatantly sexual theme featuring a lovely female nude to an audience who become as involved in the voyeurism as the elders themselves. This print is one of nine woodcuts made by Jegher after Rubens’s designs and carries an inscription that states that Rubens obtained a ‘privilege’ for this design, an early form of copyright meant to discourage copyists.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge.
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