Susanna im Bade

'Susanna im Bade' (Susanna in the Bath), painted in 1904, takes up the apocryphal story from the Book of Daniel in which the virtuous Susanna is spied upon while bathing by two corrupt elders who then falsely accuse her of adultery when she refuses their advances. The subject has a distinguished history in European painting — Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Guercino, and Artemisia Gentileschi all painted versions — and its appeal lay in the combination of a female nude in a vulnerable situation with a narrative of voyeurism and false accusation. Stuck's version at the St. Gallen Museum of Art in Switzerland belongs to his sustained engagement with the theme of the watched woman, alongside his Bathsheba and several nymph-encounter subjects. The voyeuristic structure of the Susanna narrative — the elders hidden in the garden, the woman unaware of being observed — mirrors the situation of the painting itself, which places the viewer in the position of the observing elders.

The bathing Susanna subject allows for the depiction of a reclining or semi-reclining nude in a garden setting, with the concealed elders providing implied narrative tension outside the pictorial frame.