Susanna and the Elders

The Maestro dei Trionfi Landau Finaly — the Master of the Landau-Finaly Triumphs — is an anonymous Florentine painter of the mid-fifteenth century named for a series of cassone panels depicting classical triumphs once in the Landau-Finaly collection. His Susanna and the Elders belongs to the secular narrative strand of Florentine cassone painting: the Old Testament story of the virtuous Susanna falsely accused of adultery by two elders who spied on her bathing was among the most popular subjects for cassone decoration, combining female virtue under threat with the legitimate occasion of depicting a nude female figure.

The cassone format suits the Susanna narrative, which moves through a garden setting with architectural elements framing the bathing scene and the subsequent confrontation. Tempera on panel with the crisp linear quality of Florentine cassone painting. The nude Susanna is rendered with the idealised but modest naturalism appropriate to the genre, the elders' lechery communicated through gesture and facial expression rather than explicit action.