Workshop of Jacopo Robusti, called il Tintoretto

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2006, lot 13 (as Jacopo Robusti, called Jacopo Tintoretto),

where acquired by the present owner

Samson standing over the two Philistines, threatening to kill them, was the subject of a famous model by Michelangelo, devised as the pair to his sculpture of David, in front of the entrance of Palazzo Vecchio, a project dating back to 1527, when the artist was first commissioned to produce a sculpture of Hercules and Cacus for this location.¹

Though Michelangelo never carved his marble of Samson and the Philistines, a certain number of small bronze casts (generally dating around and after the 1550s) were made from his model, and travelled quickly through the Italian peninsula.² As observed by John Marciari in his exhibition catalogue, Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice, Tintoretto must have obtained a clay or wax version of the Samson and the Philistines, as some of his many drawings of this sculptural group show a vertical support at the back, which would not have been necessary for a bronze.³ Tintoretto and his studio must have been engaging with these powerful figures, depicting the challenging sculpture from different viewpoints, around 1558-60. The master and his workshop were especially focused on the fall of light and how the intricate poses stood in space, so as to enhance their three-dimensionality. More than sixty such studies of this sculptural group are known by Tintoretto and his studio, some executed from the model, but others, as Marciari has noted, probably copied from other sheets.⁴ As Marciari pointed out, it is difficult to separate with absolute certainty the drawings in this group that were executed by Tintoretto himself from those done by his most talented pupils.⁵

Both the recto and the verso of the present sheet describe, apparently from the same angle, the powerful figure of Samson, seen from the front. Several sheets in this group are double-sided, often, as here, showing on both sides the same view of the sculpture. However, only the present sheet also incorporates a landscape sketch, on the recto, to the left of the sculpted group, apparently the only instance of the inclusion of such a feature on a study sheet of this type.

¹After the death of Pope Leo X, who commissioned the Hercules and Cacus, the project stalled for some time and when ultimately revived, it was handed to Baccio Bandinelli. After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence in 1527, the republican government returned the commission to Michelangelo, who changed the subject to Samson and Philistines

²The expensive models that Tintoretto obtained from Daniele da Volterra, as remembered by the biographer Claudio Ridolfi, in around 1557, were after Michelangelo's figures from the Medici Chapel. See C. Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'Arte, Venice 1648, vol. II, p. 6

³J. Marciari, Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice, exhib. cat., New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 103

⁴Marciari, op. cit., p. 106

⁵Marciari, op. cit., p. 101