Giambologna's Sculpture 'Samson and a Philistine ' at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

In his article, “Virtue and Vice” (Art Quarterly, Winter 2009) James Hall explains how Giambologna was born in Douai in 1529.  At that time Douai was  part of the Spanish Netherlands. Today it is a commune in Northern France.  

Around 1544 Giambologna was apprenticed to Jacques Due Broeucq, a prominent Flemish sculptor.  The young sculptor finished his apprenticeship in 1550. Like other northern artists of this period, he decided to visit Rome in order to witness at first hand the art of Renaissance Italy, in particular the work of Michaelangelo.

At this period antique sculptures were still  being excavated in Rome and Giambologna made many wax and clay studies based on his observations.

Giambologna created Samson and a Philistine for Francesco de’ Medici, the heir to the Dukedom. It shows a scene from the Old Testament in which Samson, captured and bound by the Philistines, with Herculean strength, breaks free and grabbing the jawbone of an ass, slays the whole Philistine army.

This monumental commission became the centrepiece of a fountain in Francesco’s garden.

The Florentine republic traditionally commissioned sculptures depicting antique or biblical heroes triumphing over adversity.  These commissions were, in effect, political statements. They warned Florence’s enemies that she could not be overcome, that Florence, like her biblical and mythical counterparts, was virtuous.

Samson and a Philistine is in this tradition and, according to Hall, can be compared with:

• Donatello’s David (1440s) and Judith and Holofernes (1460)
• Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa (1545-54)
• Michaelangelo’s Victory 

Giambologna is often referred to as a great sculptor in the Mannerist style. In other words, his works may be seen as stylised, formulaic, technically brilliant and perhaps over-theatrical. But James Hall sees Samson and a Philistine as having “haunting emotional depth and complexity”.

Hall gives the following pointers, which he believes give the work such emotional complexity:

• There is only one Philistine depicted, giving an intimacy between the older man and the younger victim.
• The victim is humanised. We see his beautiful face thrown back, his eyes meeting those of his attacker.
• The statue draws on other mythical and biblical stories where young men have been harshly treated by older men: Michaelangelo’s drawing The Fall of Phaeton, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s image of Abraham sacrificing his son on the Florentine Baptistery doors, and the fact that in 17th century England the image was at one time mistaken for Cain and Abel.

Samson and a Philistine is a deeply moving work embodying aspects of Florentine Renaissance political and social culture that reach out to us across the centuries.

As James Hall writes, we are indeed 'privileged to have it in our midst'.

Source:

“Virtue and Vice” by James Hall in Art Quarterly, Winter 2009