Samson

Samson or Victorious Samson, one of the most famous paintings by Guido Reni, was commissioned by Count Luigi Zambeccari as decoration for a fireplace in his home on Via Riva di Reno in Bologna. The work was later purchased by Cardinal Girolamo Boncompagni to prevent it from being sold abroad. It was donated to the City Senate in 1684.

Samson, the valiant fighter from the Old Testament, is depicted on the battlefield while drinking from a donkey's jawbone with which he has just killed a thousand Philistines, exemplified in the corpses on the ground, on many levels.

An error in the ancient translation of the biblical text had confused the name of the place where the battle took place, called Monte della Mascella, with the bone itself, generating the iconography that we see, in which the water does not flow from a crack in the rock, but from the jawbone itself.

Samson is the highest expression of that ideal of balance, beauty and harmony that inspired Guido Reni. In order to portray him, the painter studied a pose that draws on the classical model of the statue of the Apollo of Belvedere today at the Vatican museums.

The filter of ancient beauty annuls all traces of suffering and fatigue over the struggle he has just undertaken. Instead, there is a greater naturalism in the bodies of the Philistines, piled on the ground, bloody and tragic, left in the shade, sharply contrasting with the luminous quality of the victorious Samson.