Displaying ‘Susanna and the Elders’

Susanna and the Elders was first recorded in about 1639 – around the time the Queen’s House interiors were being decorated – as hanging above the fireplace in Henrietta Maria’s Withdrawing Chamber at Whitehall Palace.  

With that interior now sadly lost, however, the Queen’s House, as the only surviving domestic interior completed specifically for Henrietta Maria, makes an exceptionally apt setting for the painting. It is one which allows us to appreciate as best as possible within a real interior how the painting was originally intended to be seen.

Painting of Susanna and the Elders on display in a blue and gold room

Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi on display in the King’s Presence Chamber in the Queen’s House. Painting of Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2026 | Royal Collection Trust

The room we are displaying it in at the Queen’s House, now called the King’s Presence Chamber, was, in Henrietta Maria’s day, her Withdrawing Chamber, the parallel space to the painting’s original location at Whitehall Palace. Mimicking Henrietta Maria’s placement of the painting above the fireplace, we too are displaying it on the chimney breast.  

Indeed, Artemisia seems to have had such a position in mind already when she was working on the painting, as Niko Munz and Adelaide Izat, whose research led to the painting’s rediscovery, explain: