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Samson with the Jawbone

Creator

Dutch Artist · 1597–1664

Architect and painter Salomon de Bray spent nearly his whole life in Haarlem, where Mannerist artists Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrick Goltzius were probably his first teachers. He painted mostly religious and mythological scenes, along with portraits, landscapes, and genre pictures. An active and accomplished draftsman, De Bray made architectural drawings and highly finished preliminary studies

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Date: 1636
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: Dutch
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum

Holding the jawbone as his attribute, Samson looks upward, perhaps to God. The great strongman slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:19). Overcome by thirst, he then drank from the rock at Lechi, a name that also means "jawbone" in Hebrew. Due to a mistaken translation in the Dutch Bible, some artists depicted Samson with a jawbone, rather than the rock, issuing water. Salomon de Bray used a clear light, plain background, and a half-length composition, showing his awareness of the artistic conventions of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. *Samson with the Jawbone* shares the same size, medium, and composition with [*David with His Sword*](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/538/salomon-de-bray-david-with-his-sword-dutch-1636/); they were probably intended as pendants or companions in a series of Old Testament heroes.

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