Susanna
Susanna
- Artist
- Domenico Tintoretto
- Artist Dates
- 1560-1635
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Susanna
- Date
- c. 1580s
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 150.2 x 102.6 cm (59 1/8 x 40 3/8 in)
- K Number
- K422
- Repository
- National Gallery of Art
- Accession Number
- 1939.1.231
- Notes
Provenance
Probably Senator Lorenzo Dolfin [or Delfino, 1591-1663], Venice, by 1642. [1] George Oakley Fisher [1859-1933], Egremont House, Sudbury, England. [2] (David M. Koetser Gallery, London). (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence); sold June 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; [3] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] In a passage first linked to the NGA painting by Wilhelm Suida (manuscript opinion in NGA curatorial files), Tintoretto's biographer Carlo Ridolfi wrote “Il Signor Lorenzo Delfino Senator ha … sei historie del vecchio testmento collocate sopra poste [presumed to be an error for “porte,” doors]; cioè …Susana nel giardino, & i due vecchi, che spuntano di lontano da un pergolato….” (“Senator Lorenzo Delfino has. . .six scenes from the Old Testament placed above doors; namely. . .Susanna in the garden, and the two old men, emerging in the distance from a pergola. . ."); _Vita di Giacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto_, Venice, 1642: 72. The other subjects mentioned by Ridolfi as part of the ensemble were Adam and Eve, Hagar and the Angel, Lot and his Daughters, Abraham Sacrificing Isaac, and Ruth and Boaz. All seem to be lost. See also: Carlo Ridolfi, _Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo Le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato_, 2 vols., Venice, 1648: 2:45; Carlo Ridolfi, _Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo Le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato_ (Venice, 1648), edited by Detlev von Hadeln, 2 vols., Berlin, 1914-1924: 2(1924):54. If the painting described by Ridolfi is, as scholars believe, the NGA painting, it appears as item 45 of page 286 in a partition document dated 26 November 1655: "Tintoretto vecchio, Susana insediata da vicchi." See: The Getty Provenance Index Databases, Archival Inventories, no. I-3348 (Dolfin); and Linda Borean, "Appunti per una storia del collezionismo a Venezia nel Seicento: la pinacoteca di Lorenzo Dolfin," _Studi Veneziani_ 38 (1999): 259-291. [2] Fisher was a book collector and antiquarian; the NGA painting does not appear in the several sales of his collection held by his executors in London in 1934 (see NGA curatorial files). [3] The bill of sale for a group of paintings, including the Tintoretto, is dated 1 June 1936 (copy in NGA curatorial files).