(Bologna 1648–1729)
Susanna and the Elders,
oil on canvas, shaped, 132 x 133.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Fontainebleau;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Daniele Benati for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing.

The close-cropped composition and the repertoire of expressive gestures with the figure of Susanna emerging from the dark ground are all characteristic of Franceschini’s artistic output. The figures of the elders can be compared to the figure of Saint Luke in the Madonna and Child between Saints Luke, John the Baptist and Pietro Celestino executed by Franceschini in 1678 for San Giovanni Battista dei Celestini, Bologna. The pose adopted for the figure of Susanna, with her leg extended outward, is also a distinctive trait of Franceschini’s manner during the 1680s: the decade to which this painting can therefore be dated. Subsequently the painter was to abandon this type in favour of a more rigorously classical style.

The present painting can also be compared to another similar work (175 x 235 cm) representing the same subject, conserved in the Opera Pia dei Poveri Vergognosi in Bologna (see D.Miller, Marcantonio Franceschini, 2001, p.114, fig.18). Franceschini also took inspiration for this composition from the Susanna and the Elders by Annibale Carracci in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome (inv. no. FC 326). The work at Rome was executed by Annibale for the Bolognese Facchinetti family, and it would have been known by Franceschini.

Franceschini was one of the most important artists active in Bologna during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He was a pupil of Carlo Cignani and went on to become one of the master’s collaborators; he also studied the Carracci and the works of Domenichino. During the 1680s he executed the frescoes of Palazzo Marescotti Brazzetti as well as those for the Bolognese churches of Corpus Domini and San Bartolomeo. In 1696 he also executed works for the Salone of the Palazzo Ducale, Modena, working in collaboration with Enrico Haffner. Additionally, he painted numerous altarpieces, such as the Communion of the Apostles (in the church of Corpus Domini, Bologna). Amongst his secular productions, most remarkable is the extraordinary commission of twenty-six paintings of mythological subjects completed for the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna, between 1692 and 1700, as well as various works executed in 1715 for the Palazzo Spinola and for the Podestà family in Genoa. The Four Seasons of 1716 in the Pinacoteca di Bologna are also of notable interest.