Study After Michelangelo's Design for a Bronze Statue of Samson Fighting the Philistines

Author: Albert Elen

Drawing played a crucial role in Tintoretto’s workshop. As well as numerous drawings after life models, preparatory for paintings, he drew dozens of studies from sculptural models, reproductions of both antique sculptures and contemporary ones by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), viewing them from different angles by candlelight and studying the play of light over the muscular bodies. He involved his pupils in this practice, including his children Marietta, Domenico and Marco (born between 1555 and 1560), as a part of their artistic training. As they all tried to emulate their father’s example, using the same materials and techniques, it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish between the multiplicity of hands. A further complicating factor is that the same sheet was often subsequently used by others to add their own drawings, either on a vacant area next to the first, or on the reverse side. Often these drawings do not copy the sculptural model itself, but another drawing after it, either on the same sheet or on another. Sometimes even counterproofs were made, which were worked up for study purposes. When a drawing is less accomplished, lacking the master’s powerful handling of the chalk, it is usually considered a workshop production. These studies were made over a long period and were all kept without differentiation in the family workshop stock for later use.

Tintoretto is renowned for his use of carta azzurra, the typical Venetian blue paper, which was particularly suited to making studies after sculptural models as the middle tone allowed the artist to create strong contrasts of light and dark by combining black chalk or charcoal with white highlights.

The model for this drawing, as well as for some thirty more sheets now scattered across several museums and private collections worldwide, is Michelangelo’s design for a large marble sculpture of Samson slaying two Philistines. This estigious commission was received from the Florentine city government in 1527 and intended to be placed adjacent to his David on the Piazza della Signoria.^[1] In the end, the sculpture was not executed, but in the 1550s or later Michelangelo’s clay or wax model of 1528-29, now lost, was anonymously reproduced in several equally small bronze replicas, including two in Florence and one in Rotterdam (BEK 1131).^[2] However, Tintoretto must have used a wax, clay or plaster cast instead of a bronze because in some of the drawings, though obviously not in the Rotterdam sheet, a vertical support can be seen at the back of the main figure, depending on the angle at which the model is viewed. Like many other drawings of this kind, our sheet has the same drawing repeated on the reverse. Both are considered workshop repetitions after a common source, perhaps an earlier copy after an original by the master.^[3] The recto version is slightly stronger than the one on the reverse, which is probably by another pupil, but nevertheless ascribed to Jacopo by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat 1944.

Many of the other drawings after this model are approximately 450 mm tall, allowing a study to exact scale of the sculptural model, which measures 378 mm. In our somewhat smaller drawing the figure group, consisting of Samson raising his club in his right hand, ready to slay the Philistine clinging to his legs while kneeling on the body of his dead or wounded companion, is seen from the front and slightly from above, and still to scale.

A larger sheet, likewise with a frontal view but the model slightly turned to the left, is also in the Koenigs Collection, but now among the 308 drawings held in the Pushkin Museum and claimed by the Netherlands (I 224).^[4] It comes from the Vallardi collection, and is considered autograph by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944).^[5] They are two out of only six known drawings recording the model from this frontal viewpoint, although the angle may differ slightly; two other workshop drawings are now in Berlin and Toronto, and two double-sided sheets with autograph studies on the front and a workshop repetition on the reverse, are now in Paris and New York.^[6]