1630
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Samson is a 1630 unspecified by Valentin de Boulogne, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A man sits slumped at a table, his head heavy on one hand. A lion skin hangs behind him, and a jawbone lies on the table. His armor glints in the dim light. This is Samson, the strongman from the Bible, shown after his victories. The bees on his breastplate aren’t just decoration—they’re the symbol of the Barberini family, who paid for the painting. They hired Valentin to paint it while he was living in Rome. To see how light and shadow shape a face like this, look up *chiaroscuro*.
The Old Testament hero Samson rests his head on his hand in a pensive, even melancholic pose. Objects on the table recall two of his heroic deeds: he killed a lion with his bare hands, and liberated the Israelites by slaughtering a thousand Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone. Samson’s cuirass, or breastplate, is joined at the shoulder by a clasp in the form of two bees—the emblem of the Barberini family, who commissioned the painting around 1630. In 1627, the Barberini had engaged Valentin to paint another biblical hero, David victorious with the head of Goliath; the canvas depicting Samson…
The figure of Samson was likely a self-portrait of the artist.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Valentin de Boulogne (before 3 January 1591 – 19 August 1632), sometimes referred to as Le Valentin, was a French painter in the tenebrist style.
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