Susanna's name originally meant "lily maiden" in Hebrew, and lilies symbolized purity.
In the Bible story, Susanna was a beautiful woman, chaste in character and devoutly faithful to the law. Two elder judges became obsessed with her beauty and often looked for chances to spy on her. One day, as Susanna was preparing to bathe in her garden, the two elders leaped out and tried to violate her. Susanna fiercely refused. Hearing her screams, people rushed into the garden, but the two elders falsely accused her of meeting a lover. At the public trial the next day, Susanna was sentenced to death. The young prophet Daniel received divine revelation, pleaded her case, and saved her life. The lying elders were executed.
There were quite a few works on this subject in the Louvre Museum, many of them masterpieces Napoleon had looted from Italy. Georgiana returned some of them because "they were not good enough."
These paintings placed excessive emphasis on the beauty of the female body while failing to show her resistance and terror. In one of them, Susanna even looked as though she were flirting with the elders.
If that were really the case, then it was not Susanna resisting but an ancient Roman bathhouse. While touring the gallery, Denon told her the story of an Italian woman painter named Artemisia. When she was eighteen, she was violated by Agostino Tassi, her painting teacher and friend. With her father's support, she took Tassi to court.
During the seven-month trial, Tassi appeared in court only a limited number of times. All he had to do was claim in court that the eighteen-year-old girl was a whore who had seduced him, and then he could leave. Artemisia was the one subjected to more questioning. During that time, she not only had