Samson in Chains

In 1650 Iacomo Manilli, keeper of the Villa Borghese, described this nude as a work by Sebastiano del Piombo, a Venetian painter who had worked alongside Michelangelo in Rome. In 1678 the Bolognese biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia gave it to Annibale Carracci, yet the family's own inventory of 1693 called it a Titian. Only in 1928 did the art historian Roberto Longhi settle it back on Annibale, and it is now dated to around 1594. The story comes from the Book of Judges. Samson has let the men of Judah tie him up to hand him over to the Philistines, and he waits in the cave of Etam, arms bound behind his back, head sunk in shadow. At his feet lies the jawbone of an ass, the weapon he will turn on his enemies. The museum likens his heavy, motionless stance to Michelangelo's marble Prisoners. It hangs in the Room of David, named for Bernini's statue.