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<\/p>\nThe newest acquisition is a first for the Kimbell Art Museum. Samson and Two Philistines, a bronze sculpture by Italian artist by Stefano Maderno, is the first seventeenth-century bronze to enter the Kimbell\u2019s collection. It is currently on view in the Kimbell\u2019s Louis I. Kahn Building.<\/p>\n
\u201cSamson and the Philistines\u00a0is without question one of the greatest seventeenth-century Italian bronzes and is already integral to the Kimbell\u2019s collection,\u201d said Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. \u201cRemarkably, the sculpture looks so at home in the museum\u2019s galleries that they now seem as though they had been incomplete without it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tRobert LaPrelle, Kimbell Art MuseumRobert LaPrelle, Kimbell Art Museum<\/p>\n
Stefano Maderno, Samson and Two Philistines, 1624, bronze. Kimbell Art Museum<\/p>\n
Measuring a little over two feet tall, the sculpture is a dynamic depiction of the Old Testament account of Samson\u2014a figure possessed of superhuman strength\u2014raising a donkey’s jawbone to strike an enemy Philistine while another lies motionless at his feet. The arrangement of these two beaten figures twisted in a pile beneath Samson represents the mass of vanquished Philistines he left in his wake: \u201cWith the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps\u201d (Judges 15:16).\u00a0From every angle of these three nude male figures, a new aspect of the story is revealed, showcasing the artist\u2019s complex composition and bronze casting.<\/p>\n
Maderno was a leading Roman sculptor during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He was central to the transition between the late Renaissance, or Mannerist, style of artists such as Giambologna and the emergence of the Baroque, as epitomized by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.<\/p>\n
Between 1587 and 1592, Maderno apprenticed in Rome with the Flemish sculptor Niccol\u00f2 Pippi, before eventually executing numerous commissions for Popes and other high-ranking ecclesiastical figures. Today, he is best-known for his early, path-breaking marble\u00a0Saint Cecilia\u00a0(1600, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome), a figure that was unprecedented for both its realism and its poetic simplicity. It was highly influential in the development of Baroque sculpture, including Bernini’s passionate depictions of recumbent saints.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although known for making of terracotta statuettes, which were then commissioned in bronze by collectors, no small-scale bronzes after compositions by the artist could be firmly dated to his lifetime \u2013 until now. Samson and Two Philistines\u00a0bears around its base the names of both its sculptor and caster, Horatio Albritio (aka Orazio Albrizzi), \u00a0as well as its date of production.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tRobert LaPrelle, Kimbell Art MuseumRobert LaPrelle, Kimbell Art Museum<\/p>\n
The base of Stefano Maderno, Samson and Two Philistines, 1624, bronze. Kimbell Art Museum <\/p>\n
The inscription on the base of\u00a0Samson and Two Philistines\u00a0proudly states that the exquisitely finished statuette was cast in a single pour of bronze, an extraordinary technical achievement. Careful chasing and hammering give its surface an almost shimmering quality. One can only conclude that this was an important commission for both Maderno and Albrizzi, and no other example of the composition is known.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisplayed alongside the superb terracotta modello for the Triton Fountain by Maderno\u2019s younger rival Bernini,\u00a0Samson and Two Philistines\u00a0enhances the Kimbell\u2019s presentation of Roman sculptural production in the seventeenth century. Visitors will have the opportunity to appreciate it from every angle and experience its almost cinematically unfolding narrative,\u201d said Emerson Bowyer, chief curator at the Kimbell Art Museum.<\/p>\n