Samson and Delilah
Italy
c.1500, active c.1530 - 70
after Tiziano Vecellio called Titian
Italy
c.1485-90 – 1576
Samson and Delilah
c 1540-45
woodcut on paper
- Place made
- Venice, Italy
- Medium
- woodcut on paper
- Dimensions
- 31.4 x 51.0 cm (image & sheet)
- Credit line
- Bequest of David Murray 1908
- Accession number
- 084G1955
- Signature and date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Catalogue raisonne
- Rosand & Muraro (1976) 39
- Media category
- Collection area
- European prints
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WALL LABEL: A Beautiful Line: Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi, 2012
This dynamic composition depicts an incident from the Old Testament story of Samson and Delilah, as related in the Book of Judges (7–16). Samson, one of the Judges of Israel and who was endowed with great strength, was finally captured by the Philistines with the help of the deceitful Delilah. Seduced by Delilah’s beauty, Samson revealed to her that the secret of his strength lay in his long hair. Titian depicts the moment when Delilah’s maid has shorn Samson’s hair, and with it destroyed his strength. Soldiers rush to subdue the once fearsome Samson, ready to bind his arms. Titian’s treatment invests the subject with a potent energy, conveying the uncoiling of violence following Delilah’s betrayal.
Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs
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A beautiful line. Italian prints from Mantegna to Piranesi
Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 August 2010 – 31 October 2010