• home
  • index of films
    • index of films featuring maps
    • index of films featuring photography
    • bibliography
  • blogs
    • maps in films
    • choses vues - things seen
    • l'Escalographe
    • the BlowUp moment
  • how to map a film
    • the first maps >
      • Some Maps in Gance's Napoléon
  • Paris
    • 1890s-1909 >
      • firemen in Paris, 1896
      • La Villette c.1896-97
      • Hatot-Breteau 1897
      • Place de l'Opéra
      • Paris 1900
      • French Cancan >
        • the real Paquerette >
          • Paquerettes
      • Alice Guy - Paris locations >
        • Alice Guy in the brothel ...
      • a dangerous street corner
      • Capellani in Paris
      • La Fille du faux-monnayeur
    • 1910-1929 >
      • a gateway out of Paris c.1910
      • L'Enfant de Paris (narrative of an identification)
      • Fantomas Over Paris: episode 1 >
        • Fantomas Over Paris: episode 2 >
          • Fantomas Over Paris: episode 3 >
            • Fantomas Over Paris: episode 4 >
              • Fantomas Over Belgium
      • One Place, Three Films: Fantomas and the French New Wave
      • a staircase in Belleville
      • Vampires Over Paris >
        • Les Vampires 1
        • Les Vampires 2
        • Les Vampires 3
        • Les Vampires 4
        • Les Vampires 5
        • Les Vampires 6
        • Les Vampires, 7
        • Les Vampires 8
        • Les Vampires 9
        • Les Vampires 10
      • Irma Vep posts a letter
      • Inside-Outside: space and light in Judex
      • L'Affaire Barsac
      • neon Paris c.1913
      • electric nights in Paris (and Berlin)
    • 1930-1959 >
      • Quai des Orfèvres
      • Olivia - Audry - 1951
      • Paris Noir: Becker, Dassin, Melville
      • the persistence of graffiti: Paris c.1952
      • Du rififi chez les hommes - reading topotropically >
        • Du rififi chez les hommes - locations identified
      • Het Parijs van Le Ballon rouge
    • the New Wave and after >
      • New Wave places >
        • New Wave Paris >
          • New Wave Newness: architecture in Paris
          • Eric Rohmer in the rue de la Huchette, c.1956
          • Les 400 coups: Paris locations >
            • Baisers volés
          • 'New York Herald Tribune' - Parrish and Godard on the rue de Berri >
            • A bout de souffle (narrative of an identification)
          • the Grisbi connection: Chabrol and Becker
          • Les Bonnes Femmes: sequence by sequence
          • Une femme est une femme: the places documented
          • the boulevard des Italiens
          • Jules et Jim: Paris configured
          • the place of cinema: cinema as location in Vivre sa vie
          • Godard and Melville: the view from the rue Jenner >
            • Melville: more views from the rue Jenner
          • the New Wave in Pigalle c.1963
          • La Peau douce - displaced places
          • Le Bonheur 1965
          • Paris vu par
          • Masculin Féminin
          • The Topography of La Guerre est finie
        • France
      • Le Samourai: places and maps >
        • Un flic: art and artifice
      • Bresson in Paris - Pickpocket
      • Bresson 69-71
      • Every Revolution
      • statues in Godard and Duras
      • Holy Motors >
        • Holy Motors - notes
    • banlieues >
      • Le Canal de Ourcq
      • Ville d'Avray en 1903
      • Three filmmakers in Romainville
      • filmmaking in the Fontainebleau forest
      • Feuillade's lonely villas
      • anarchists in the suburbs c.1912
      • One Church Two Cemeteries: Clouzot and Chabrol at Montfort L'Amaury
      • Feuilladian Franju - Les Yeux sans visage
      • country houses and suburban villas
      • banlieue locations in L'Amour existe
      • the Landru Villa
      • 1 place 2 filmmakers: Rivette & Chabrol in Ermenonville
      • Céline et Julie: what's the address of that house?
      • cinemas in La Petite Voleuse
    • The Stairs: Paris
  • London
    • 1890s-1920s >
      • Lumiere London >
        • Lumière London, bis
      • Robert Paul in London: tour guide and film maker
      • Ultus in Isleworth
      • Cocaine 1922
      • Fu Manchu 1923
    • London Locations >
      • Piccadilly Circus >
        • Piccadilly Circus in films
        • Piccadilly Circus in art
        • Piccadilly Circus in postcards
        • Piccadilly Circus photographed
        • Piccadilly Circus: invisible things
      • Muswell Hill
      • the Arsenal Stadium mysteries
      • Brentford streets on screen
    • the locality of London studios >
      • Early Ealing
      • straight out of Whetstone
      • Walthamstow's studios
    • Sherlock Holmes >
      • some Baker Street irregularities
      • an American Sherlock in London
    • Sojourners + Cosmopolitans >
      • London in French Film >
        • Rififi in London
        • London in London River
      • maps in krimis
      • Kriminal (1966)
      • Kaurismaki's London c. 1989
    • places in Face
  • Geneva
    • Swiss New Wave - shared-world practice
    • Geneva in Swiss New Wave films >
      • SNW Geneva: collective housing
      • SNW Geneva: villas
      • SNW Geneva: bowlings + piscines
    • The Chronology of Le Petit Soldat
    • La Lune avec les dents (Michel Soutter 1966)
    • L'Inconnu de Shandigor (J.-L. Roy 1967)
  • signage, etc.
  • studios, etc.
    • Eclair
    • Eclipse
    • Gaumont >
      • Cité Elgé locations
    • Lumière
    • Lux
    • Pathé >
      • Where's Max >
        • when Harry met Max, and where
        • Max takes the train
      • Bébé victime d'une erreur...
      • Montreuil in Pathe films
      • Pathé police stations
      • Pathé filmmaking in Nice c. 1908
    • studios & the local >
      • Ealing >
        • Kind Hearts and Coronets: suburbia and other places
        • the view from Ealing
  • my local filmmaker
    • The Unfortunate Policeman >
      • Buy Your Own Cherries >
        • The Medium Exposed >
          • The ? Motorist >
            • The Fatal Hand >
              • A Little Bit of Cloth
              • Blind Man's Bluff >
                • Bill Sikes Up-To-Date
    • Walter Booth in Muswell Hill
  • my local cinemas
  • favourites
    • Agnès Varda >
      • Cleo 5-7 - Time
      • Sans toit ni loi >
        • Sans toit ni loi - the 12 tracking shots
        • Mona's postcard collection
    • Alice Guy >
      • Alice Guy + JLG
    • Chris Marker
    • Jacques Rivette >
      • a map of Out 1
      • Le Pont du Nord: locations identified >
        • topographical telescoping in Le Pont du Nord
        • Le Pont du Nord (narrative of an identification)
    • J.-L. Godard >
      • Godardiana
      • A bout de souffle: footnotes to the film >
        • A bout de souffle - the cast list
        • A bout de souffle in colour
      • photographs in Le Petit Soldat
      • Bande à part
      • Paintings in Pierrot le fou
      • sculptures in Made in USA
      • Les Fins de Godard
      • Week End - time, place and cars
      • Bukowski in Sauve qui peut (la vie)
      • Life magazine + Hdc
    • J.-P. Melville
    • Louis Feuillade
    • Max Linder
    • Robert Paul
  • cine-tourists
    • a German tourist in Paris: Le Silence de la mer
    • an American tourist in Paris
    • History Lessons in Rome
  • Nouvelle Vague
    • New Wave Christmas
    • the New Wave and modern art >
      • New Wave Braque
      • New Wave Chagall
      • New Wave Klee
      • New Wave Manet
      • New Wave Miro
      • New Wave Modigliani
      • New Wave Picasso
      • Pierre Alechinsky in Le Joli Mai (1963)
    • New Wave cameos
    • Attal et Zardi
    • Le Signe du Lion: six small things
    • New Wave films in New Wave films
    • Cahiers du Cinéma on screen
  • other things
    • assorted stamps
    • Maps in Books
    • the topographies of La Fille aux yeux d'or
    • place-time in Thérèse Raquin
    • photography >
      • 10 photographs by Brassaï in 3 Paris dancehalls >
        • painters in the rue Blomet
      • Gisèle Freund in Paris >
        • Gisèle Freund in Histoire(s) du cinéma
      • Godard's Histoire(s): photographs of women
      • the photographer as photographer: André Dino with Tati, Truffaut and Chabrol
      • some Simenon book covers
      • films playing at the Moulin Rouge
    • building sites >
      • a building site and some buildings, c.1961 >
        • Jean Ginsberg
      • 93 - Seine Saint Denis: HLM, cités, grands ensembles >
        • 93 - Seine Saint Denis: Aubervilliers to Bondy
        • 93 - Seine Saint Denis: Drancy to l'île Saint Denis
        • 93 - Seine Saint Denis: La Courneuve to Saint Ouen
        • 93 - Seine Saint Denis: Sevran to Villepinte
      • Chateau Gaillard
      • Euston Station
    • investigations >
      • A Remarkable Journey in Zigoto's New Motor-Car - 1912
      • the Hotel Bristol enigma
    • news >
      • French news
      • news from England
      • news from the U.S.
    • a picture of great significance
    • A Girl and a Gun >
      • Griffith, Shadowland, May 1922
  • efc - places
  • contact details
    • directories
    • address books
    • hotel registers
    • envelopes and postcards
    • telegrams
  • family, locality
    • a Succession of Edwards
    • Henri Grieshaber - architecte chaudefonnier
  • about this site
  • Publications
The Cine-Tourist
a picture of great significance: Hitchcock's Susannah


Picture
(Apologies for what is not strictly a Cine-Tourist post. For the maps in Psycho, see here.)


In the course of his guided tour of the Bates house and motel, Hitchcock points to a  picture on the wall of the parlour and says:  'Oh, by the way, this picture has great significance, because ...', but then he moves on to another room. 

In the film itself we see the picture better, firstly as one of a number of objets:
Picture
Then in close up, as Norman removes it to reveal a spyhole through which he will observe his victim:
Picture
The normal viewer identifies with Norman and wants to see what he sees:
Picture
The less normal viewer (that's us) wants to go back and look more closely at the picture that had hitherto obscured Norman's view:
Picture

​There has been consensus that the subject represented here is Susannah and the Elders, an episode from the Book of Daniel in which two old men spy on then attempt to rape a woman as she bathes. As far as I can gather no one has identified the artist, though I haven't gone through the entire corpus of 
Psycho scholarship to be sure. 

(My apologies if this post turns out to be redundant. [It turns out that it is - see note at the end of this post.])

As I was browsing through the images collected at the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, I happened across the above, the original of the image Hitchcock used. 

Picture
The artist is identified by the RMN as Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681), and the work is said to be at the Hyacinthe Rigaud museum in Perpignan. However, another French government site attributes the painting to Willem van Mieris (1662-1747), Frans's youngest son:
Picture
The picture, measuring 35 by 31 centimetres,  is dated to 1731 and Willem's signature is said to be apparent. After going to Bonn from Paris in 1944 it was given to the Louvre in 1950, and then to the museum in Perpignan in 1957. It was stolen from there in 1972.

It would be interesting to know where Hitchcock found the image. Bill Krohn reports that Hitchcock had in his dining room a work by Thomas Rowlandson called Fast Day (1812), depicting clerics feasting. On the wall behind them is a painting of Susannah and the Elders, very like the Van Mieris:
Picture
Very like but not exactly. The old men do not appear to be touching Susannah yet, and she has her left arm raised rather than the right:
Picture
The Susannah in Rowlandson's print is a different version of the subject from the one in Psycho, not necessarily based on an existing work. It isn't, certainly, Rowlandson's own, less canonical version of the subject (see here).

(My thanks to Ken Mogg via Adrian Martin for pointing out Bill Krohn's report on the Rowlandsons owned by Hitchcock.)
You can see a wonderful collection of  Susannah-related posts at ConSentido Proprio, here.

We know now who was the artist behind the Susannah in Norman Bates's parlour, but we await identification of other images in that room. The one on the right, below,is too dark for the subject to be clear, but it looks to me like another Susannah (If anyone can identify it, please let me know here):
Picture
Picture
The picture on the left is Titian's Venus with  a Mirror (1555):
Picture
Both the Titian and the Van Mieris were first identified several years ago - see the note at the end of this post.

Here are some other pictures glimpsed in Norman's parlour. They will be hard to identify, I think:
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Addition, 08.06.2016: 'laurent05735977' tweeted with the identification of one of these images, François Boucher's Vénus consolant l'Amour from 1751:
Picture
Merci Laurent.

​

A curious footnote to the Van Mieris identification is the large number of variations on the subject executed by the same artist. See, for example, this 'erotic' print from the  1890s, based on a Van Mieris painting, recently available from La Galerie Napoléon. This version is slightly different in composition from the Van Mieris that was in Perpignan:
Picture
The print locates this version in the Musée de Bruxelles, and the image conforms exactly to the description of the painting there from an 1895 guide, down to the detail that the old man on the left is holding her left hand in his left hand.

The variation below, dated 1704 and measuring 37 by 32 cm, sold at Christie's in Amsterdam in November 2010:
Picture
This version of the subject, in which Willem van Mieris renders an ivory sculpture by Francis van Bossuit, can be found at the Detroit Institute of Arts:
Picture
In November 1973 a picture called Suzanne and the Elders by Willem van Mieris was sold at Christie's in London. It is described as 'gouache sur parchemin', measuring 139 by 108 mm, signed and dated 1691. I haven't seen the catalogue yet to know if it is the same as any of the other versions we know, but the medium, small dimensions and early date suggest yet another different work. It appears to be the same work that sold at Sotheby's in Amsterdam in 1993.

In July 1992 a chalk on vellum Susannah (313 by 250 mm) by Van Mieris sold at Christie's in London.

In 2007, this Van Mieris, from the collection of the Duc de la Vallière, was sold at Sotheby's in Melbourne:
Picture
That makes at least seven versions of the subject by Van Mieris, of which the one that until 1972 was in the Hyacinthe Rigaud museum in Perpignan was the one used by Hitchcock in Psycho.

I don't know enough to be able to explain Van Mieris's many variations on the theme, but for the time being I am just happy to know, finally, who exactly made a picture of such 'great significance'.
Picture
Note (added January 4th 2013): 

I have just discovered that the identification of the picture in Psycho had already been signalled two years ago by art historian Henry Keazor in the course of a lecture series on 'Hitchcock and the Arts' at the Universität des Saarlandes - for the forthcoming proceedings see here. 

The first identifier was, I think, Jose Franco-Pereira, in his book INNERVATIONEN - Zur unbewussten Wahrnehmungsebene in Alfred Hitchcocks PSYCHO, published in 2001 (see here). Franco-Pereira also identifies the painting by Titian.


A further correction: 

Henry Keazor has written to tell me that the first identifier of the Van Mieris was Barbara Stelzner-Large in her article ‘Zur Bedeutung der Bilder in Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho’, published in Helmut Korte & Johannes Zahlten (eds), Kunst und Künstler im Film
 (Hameln 1990),  pp.121-133.

So I have to acknowledge that, like Jean-Pierre Léaud's father in Masculin-Féminin, I have simply re-discovered why the earth goes around the sun, centuries after Galileo.
Picture