Part 11. Samson slaying the Philistine by Giambologna in The V and A

Part 11

 The Victoria and Albert Musem marble group of Samson slaying the Philistine 

by Giambologna.

Created around 1562 by Giambologna, the earliest of his marble groups which was originally commissioned by Francesco de' Medici Duke of Tuscany for a fountain in Florence, it was later gifted to Spain's Duke of Lerma and displayed in the gardens of the Palacio de la Ribera, Valladolid. Perhaps symbolizing the political power of the Medici through a dramatic biblical scene.

Giambologna’s Samson Group was gifted to the Prince of Wales, later King Charles I in 1623.

Samson Slaying a Philistine had served twice as a diplomatic gift. In 1601 it was sent to Spain as a present from the Medici to the Duke of Lerma, Philip III’s chief-minister, and then, in 1623, given by Philip IV to the Prince of Wales (later Charles I) who was visiting Spain in prospect of marriage.

As a contemporary Spanish account published in England in translation soon after puts it: “hee was much delighted with…the Alabaster Fountaine, which the Illustrious great Duke of Tuscan gave to my Lord Cardinall, the Duke of Lerma; he was served [presented] with it: It is the portrature of Cain and Abel.”

 Thus it is clear that the statue still at this time formed the centrepiece of a fountain, and not an item to be viewed in isolation. Moreover, from this we know it had already become identified with the wrong Old Testament story. It cost the Privy Purse £40 to have the statue – less the fountain base which remained in Spain and is now in Aranjuez – carted to Santander.

Charles, in turn, gave the statue to his favourite George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, who had accompanied him in Spain and who subsequently installed it at York House, London, by June the following year.

In June 1624 Sir Thomas Wentworth, the future Lord Strafford, described it in a letter: “a goodly Statue of Stone set up in the Garden before the new Building, bigger than the Life, of a Sampson with a Philistine betwixt his Legs, knocking his Brains out with the Jaw-Bone of an Ass.”  Wentworth was perceptive enough to recognise the true subject of the statue.

By 1714 Villiers had the group moved to Buckingham House which was acquired by George III in 1762, and was finally given as a gift by the Hanoverian king to his Surveyor-General, Thomas Worsley (1710-78) of Hovingham Hall. It remained in Yorkshire until 1954, when it was purchased by the V&A.

In 1883 it was still at Hovingham Hall, Yorks, the Country seat Sir William Worseley to whose grandfather it had been presented by George III (info from Historical Handbook of Italian Sculpture by Charles Callahan Perkins – pub 1883) - Page 339.

 The marble is mentioned again in English Leadwork by Lawrence Weaver pub 1909 (page 166) –

Available online at –

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7fr05c48&seq=11

or https://archive.org/details/b3136665x

Weaver goes on to mention lead versions of Samson slaying the Philistine at Chiswick (subsequently moved to Chatsworth), Harrowden Hall, Wimpole Hall and Drayton House, but he erroneously suggests that the Drayton group was modelled by Peter Scheemakers. As far as I am aware Scheemakers did not work in lead except for providing the Equestrian statue at Hull.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O14761/samson-slaying-a-philistine-figure-group-bologna-giovanni/