Samson in Chains

Carracci Annibale

(Bologna 1560 - Rome 1609)

The work, painted by Annibale Carracci around 1594, is documented in the Borghese collection from the mid-17th century, referred to in ancient inventories regarding Venetian painting of the 16th century.

The subject is taken from the Old Testament (Book of Judges 15,11-13) and depicts Samson chained up in the cave of Etam by Judah’s men, and plotting his revenge. Lying at his feet is a donkey's jawbone that the hero, with God’s help, later uses to kill a thousand Philistines.

Object details

Commentary

The precise year of this painting’s entry into the Borghese Collection is unknown. The first mention of the work comes from Iacomo Manilli in 1650, who believed it to be by Sebastiano del Piombo. Later – in 1678 – Malvasia rightly attributed it to Annibale Carracci, although the author of the 1693 inventory listed it as the work of Titian, a judgement supported by Giacomo Pinarolo in 1713.

In 1878, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle confirmed – albeit with some reservations – the name of the Venetian master. Fifteen years later, in his Storia dell'arte italiana (1928, III, p. 301) Adolfo Venturi seconded this opinion, comparing the painting to the River Allegory in the Museo di Capodimonte, which, he believed, was executed by Titian ‘after he was struck by Michelangelo’s greatness in Rome and copied the Laocoön’ (Venturi 1927, p. 276). The first critic to back Malvasia’s attribution was Roberto Longhi (1928. p. 137), who placed the execution of Samson in Annibale Carracci’s Bolognese period, suggesting a date of 1590-95. In addition, the scholar wrote that the work was ‘one of those studies influenced by the Veneto school, and more precisely by Tintoretto, which I believe Annibale found useful for studying those great nudes which are used as border figures in frescoes, along the lines of those in Palazzo Sampieri’. Aldo De Rinaldis (1939, p. 27). was in agreement with Longhi.

Building on Longhi’s proposal, Donald Posner (1971, II, p. 34, n. 83) suggested that the painting was one of ‘the three works of the same dimensions with three nudes copied from the Academy by Agostino and Annibale Caracci’: this trio of paintings was mentioned as forming part of the Ludovisi collection in Rome in 1633 (see Garas 1967, p. 347).

The painting represents the tremendously strong Biblical hero of the Book of Judges (13-16). He is portrayed here in the darkness of the cave while he waits for the divine aid that will miraculously free him from his prison. According to the Old Testament episode, Sansom was tied with two cords in the cave of Etam and forcibly dragged to the town of Lehi, where upon being saved by God he killed a great number of Philistines with a jawbone of an ass which he had found on the road.

In this painting, Annibale focuses on the moment before the divine intervention and the massacre carried out by the Biblical hero. The painter emphasises the extraordinary intellectual power of the figure by depicting his formidable physique. Samson’s pose, which alludes to Michelangelo’s Slaves, inspired Guido Reni’s Sacred and Profane Love (Genoa, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, inv. GNPS 111), which, however, gives its capricious, rebellious protagonist a touch of light-heartedness and irrationality, unlike Annibale’s Samson.

Taking into consideration several similarities between this painting and Annibale’s St Roch Giving Alms at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, Sir Denis Mahon dated the work to c.1594 (1957, p. 282), an opinion accepted by all critics.

  Antonio Iommelli