The Chaste Susannah
1885. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
This composition adheres faithfully to the academic rules for the representation of the female nude, which demanded its insertion in a narrative scene by means of justification. In this exercise to fulfil the requirements of his residential grant at the Spanish Academy in Rome, Francisco Maura, the brother of a famous politician, chooses the best-known episode from the biblical story of Susannah, in which she is harassed by two old judges while bathing in a garden in Babylon.
