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Two paintings of Samson by Lorenzo Lotto at Charlecote Park In 1839 George Lucy of Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, bought two panel paintings depicting scenes from the story of Samson. Then attributed to Titian, they are in fact by Lorenzo Lotto, working in the irst half of the 1530s. The paintings’ landscapes reveal the inluence of Northern artists. by enrico maria dal pozzolo he flow of works of art from Italy to northern Europe in the nineteenth century included two little-known paintings now housed at Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, the ancestral home of the Lucy family, which is today a National Trust property. Each of these long, narrow paintings on panel depicts an episode from the story of Samson, as narrated in the Old Testament. They are currently catalogued simply as early sixteenth-century ‘Italian (Venetian School)’.1 In the irst panel (Fig.1), Samson is shown killing the lion that attacked him on his journey from Zorah to Timnath to ask the Philistine woman with whom he had fallen in love to marry him. The second panel (Fig.2) depicts Samson’s inal victory against the Philistines. Blind and bald, he asked the boy who was leading him to permit him to rest against one of the columns of the Philistine temple: Neither episode is rare in European art, although both are less common than the episode in which Samson lies asleep in Delilah’s lap while she cuts of his hair, an especially popular subject for seventeenthcentury painters.3 From medieval times onwards Samson had been regarded as one of the igures who preigured Christ. According to a Biblia pauperum published in Venice around 1530, ‘Samson signiies Christ, who killed the lion, that is the Devil, when he liberates man from his power’.4 The destruction of the Philistines’ palace is the basis of the emblem for Fortitude – a column, sometimes intact and on other occasions, in a clear reference to the Biblical story, shattered.5 The paintings, then attributed to Titian, were acquired in 1839 by George Hammond Lucy (1798–1845), who had inherited the Charlecote estate in 1823. His wife, Mary Elisabeth Lucy, recalled in her Biography of the Lucy Family, published in 1862, that: And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.2 the pair of Titians now hanging in the drawing-room were purchased by G. Lucy in 1839, from Samuel Woodburn, for the sum of £1,500. The subjects are: one, a superb bit of landscape, with Samson tearing asunder the lion – his irst act of strength; the other, Samson pulling down the temple – his last act of strength. These two pictures were painted by Titian for the Grimani Villa, near Genova, and were imported directly T The author would like to thank the following for their assistance with research for the present article: Jadranka Beresford Peirse, Piero Boccardo, Amanda Bradley, Giovanni Maria Fara, Piero Rizzo Licori, Mauro Zanchi and – in particular – David Ekserdjian and Francis Russell. 1 National Trust, Charlecote Park, nos.533893 (Samson rending the lion) and 533894 (Samson pulling down the temple). 2 Judges, 16, 29–30. 3 For the iconography of Samson, see L. Réau: Iconographie de l’art chrétien, Paris 1956, II/1, pp.236–48; and A. Pigler: Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur 640 Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Budapest 1974, I, pp.123–32 (for the two episodes in the Charlecote paintings, see esp. pp.124–25 and 132). 4 ‘Sansone significa Christo, el quale amazò lo leone, cioè el diavolo, quando lui liberò luhomo dala sua potestà’, Opera nova contemplativa per ogni fidel christiano laquale tratta de le figure del testamento vecchio [. . .], Venice, n.d. and n.p. (sig.FIIIv). 5 G. de Tervarent: Attributs et symboles dans l’art profane 1450– 1600: dictionnaire d’un langage perdu, Geneva 1997, pp.135–37. the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 6 M.E. Lucy: Biography of the Lucy Family, London 1862, pp.168–69. 7 H. Preston: ‘Samuel Woodburn’, in J. Turner, ed.: The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, XXXIII, p.345; S. Turner: ‘Samuel Woodburn’, Print Quarterly 20, 2 (2003), pp.131–44. 8 I am grateful to Piero Boccardo for this information. 9 Dulwich Picture Gallery inv. nos. DPG 492 and DPG 493. See J. Ingamells: Dulwich Picture Gallery. British, London 2008, p.209, www. dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/explorethe-collection/451-500, accessed 16th July 2018. 10 Sale, Christie’s, London, 1st June 1945, lot 38. This information comes from the iles on the two paintings in the National Trust Archives, London, which Amanda Bradley kindly permitted me to consult in 2013 after I had informed her of the proposed attribution to Lotto. 11 As recorded in a note in the Curator of Pictures and Sculpture’s iles, National Trust Archives, London. 12 Ibid. This work was carried out by a ‘Miss Stocker’. 13 J. Gore: ‘Supplement: Pictures in National Trust Houses – I’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 99 (1957), pp.137–42, p.138, reproduced p.140, ig.8. 14 F.L. Richardson: Andrea Schiavone, Oxford 1980. 1. Samson tearing asunder the lion, here attributed to Lorenzo Lotto. c.1530–35. Panel, 26.7 by 97.8 cm. (Private collection, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire). 2. Samson pulling down the temple, here attributed to Lorenzo Lotto, c.1530–35. Panel, 26.7 by 97.8 cm. (Private collection, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire). from there; they are in the most perfect state, and are believed never to have been touched or cleaned since they left the Grimani collection.6 This is a valuable reference, since it provides the name of the dealer from whom Lucy acquired the paintings, Samuel Woodburn (1786–1853), who is best known for his role in dispersing Thomas Lawrence’s great collection of drawings.7 Lucy’s comment on their original provenance may be less reliable. The present author is unaware of any such place as ‘the Grimani Villa, near Genova’ and Federigo Alizeri’s Guida artistica per la città di Genova, published in Genoa in 1846–47, mentions no Grimani residences near the city. Lucy may have been thinking of the Grimani of Venice, but since it seems unlikely that she would have confused the two cities it is more plausible that she meant to refer to the Grimaldi family. However, although there are a number of ‘Grimaldi villas’ both to the east and to the west of Genoa, they did not in general contain important pictures, so far as one can tell from their surviving inventories.8 In particular, none is known to have contained paintings of the story of Samson attributed to Titian. The few paintings by the artist recorded in the city were mostly portraits or more traditional sacred subjects. In the present state of knowledge the panels’ origins must remain uncertain, especially as the possibility should be borne in mind that their provenance could have been, if not invented outright, embellished at the time of their sale. The attribution to Titian was maintained through the nineteenth century. As such the panels were copied by the curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery Thomas F. Hodgkins, who in 1892 gave his replicas to the Gallery, where they remain.9 The attribution to Titian has apparently never been the subject of scholarly debate, probably because the paintings were not mentioned in publications on the artist, thanks to their location in a private residence to which access was not easy. In the irst half of the twentieth century the paintings were ofered for sale on two occasions but failed to ind buyers. A photograph in the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute, London, dated 1929, was taken when the Samson and the lion panel was at the Asscher and Welker Gallery in London, with an attribution to Andrea Schiavone. It is not known if its pair was also there. On 1st June 1945 both paintings were ofered at Christie’s with an attribution to Titian, but again remained unsold.10 After this, scholars began to take more notice of them, perhaps helped by the fact that access to them became easier following the National Trust’s acquisition of Charlecote Park in 1946. In 1956 St John Gore, the National Trust’s curator of paintings from 1956 to 1986, showed the panels to Johannes Wilde.11 His response was ambivalent. According to Gore, Wilde declared that they ‘are not by Schiavone, but by an artist close to Titian whom he is unable to identify’. At the time they were extremely dirty and the panels had sufered badly from infestation, so in 1956 they were sent to the Courtauld Institute to be cleaned and restored.12 In the following year they were published for the irst time, as ‘Venetian sixteenth century’, in an article by Gore in this Magazine on paintings in National Trust houses.13 Since then there have been few attempts to identify this ‘artist close to Titian’. The proposal that he was Schiavone did not ind favour and the paintings were not included by Francis L. Richardson in his 1980 monograph on the painter.14 In 1962–63 Alessandro Ballarin sugested the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 641 Two paintings by Lorenzo Lotto 3. Samson, by Giovan Francesco Capoferri after a drawing by Lorenzo Lotto. 1531–32. Intarsia, 41.7 by 39.4 cm. (S. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo). 4. Detail of Fig.1. 642 the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 that the panels were by Lambert Sustris, but did not argue the case.15 The two paintings were mentioned, without a precise attribution, in some editions of the National Trust’s guidebook to Charlecote.16 In 2011 Amanda Bradley catalogued the paintings for the National Trust as early sixteenth-century ‘Italian (Venetian) School’, adding that their format sugested that they ‘may have been used to decorate a piece of furniture, such as a chest’.17 Today the paintings are described on both the National Trust and Art UK websites as sixteenth-century ‘Italian (Venetian School)’.18 The panels are in good condition, their picture surfaces have no major losses and their quality of execution is relatively high. Their format and size would sugest that they were made as overdoors, rather than as panels for chests. The diference in scale between the two depictions of Samson would seem to exclude the possibility that the panels were originally part of a single long frieze that was subsequently cut up into single sections, as sometimes happened, but in the absence of a scientiic analysis of the paintings it is impossible to be sure. Stylistic evidence allows an attribution to be made to Lorenzo Lotto, working in the irst half of the 1530s. The paintings are typical of his art in this period when, after many years in Bergamo, he was again working in Venice and Le Marche. Moreover, the igure of Samson grappling with the lion reappears in almost identical form in one of the intarsia panels designed by Lotto for the choir of S. Maria Magiore, Bergamo (Fig.3).19 The overall composition is however quite diferent, as the intarsia panel in Bergamo combines three episodes from the story of Samson into one scene: in the background we see Samson’s departure from Zorah with his parents (the group is repeated to give a sense of their journey); in the middle zone, at the left, we Two paintings by Lorenzo Lotto see Samson dispatching the lion; and the foreground is dedicated to a later moment in the story when, in order to take revenge on the father of the woman promised to him, who had given her away as a bride to Samson’s companion: Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took irebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a irebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on ire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.20 The composition of the Charlecote panel focuses instead on the moment when Samson kills the lion, a scene that had been treated by Israel van Meckenem, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder.21 Maarten van Heemskerck would also treat the episode in a painting now known only through an engraving by Philip Galle.22 But unlike all these examples, in both the Bergamo intarsia and the Charlecote painting Samson is depicted killing the lion by tearing apart not its jaws but its hind legs (Fig.4). 15 A. Ballarin: ‘Lamberto d’Amsterdam (Lamberto Sustris): le fonti e la critica’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 121 (1962–63), pp.335–66, esp. p.364. The paintings are mentioned only briely, at the end of an essay on Sustris’s critical historiography. 16 For example, O. Garnett: Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, London 2005, p.18. 17 This catalogue entry (see note 10 above) includes a similar conclusion to that reached by Wilde: ‘It is not possible to identify the artist of this picture, but it was someone who was working close to Titian’. 18 www.nationaltrustcollections.org. uk/object/533893, www. nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/ object/533894 and artuk.org/ discover/artworks/samson-rendingthe-lion-130246, accessed 16th July 2018. 19 F. Cortesi Bosco: Il coro intarsiato di Lotto e Capoferri per S. Maria Maggiore, Cinisello Balsamo 1987, I, pp.486–87, no.65. See also M. Zanchi: La Bibbia secondo Lorenzo Lotto: il coro ligneo della Basilica di Bergamo intarsiato da Capoferri, Clusone 2003. 20 Judges, 15, 4–5. 21 See P.A. Wick: ‘Samson slaying the lion by Israhel van Meckenem’, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 51 (1953), pp.85–89; for the Dürer, see G.M. Fara: Albrecht Dürer. Originali, copie, derivazioni, Florence 2007, pp.168–70; and for the Cranach, see W. Schade: Cranach. A Family of 5. Detail of Fig.1. 6. Detail of Portrait of a man, by Lorenzo Lotto. c.1535. Panel, 118 by 105 cm. (Galleria Borghese, Rome). Lotto’s decision in the Charlecote panel to isolate the igure of Samson by inserting him on a small scale into an extensive landscape was probably intended to emphasise the decorative value of the scene, which seems to show an awareness of contemporary Northern landscape painting, examples of which would certainly have been available to him in Venice.23 For example, the manner in which the vegetation on the left-hand side of the picture is described – with clear deinition of individual leaves of the bushes in the foreground can be striking paralleled in the work of the anonymous Flemish painter who completed Palma Vecchio’s Venus and Cupid in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.24 In contrast, the right-hand side of the Charlecote composition demonstrates a quite diferent approach, with a much broader chromatic background, painted with fluid brushstrokes applied with a broad ‘impressionistic’ brush, evidently with the aim of creating a hazy and less deined efect for the distant view (Fig.5). There Master Painters, New York 1980, ig.103 (with a dating of 1520–25). 22 I.M. Velman and G. Luijten, eds.: The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700, Amsterdam 1993, I, pp.83–89. 23 On Flemish artists in the Veneto in the early sixteenth century, see L. Campbell: ‘The art market in the Southern Netherlands in the ifteenth century’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 118 (1976) pp.188–98; F. Rossi: ‘“Il porto e la scala di Alemagna”: artisti del Nord a Verona’, in C. Limentani Virdis, ed.: La pittura fiamminga nel Veneto e nell’Emilia, Verona 1987, pp.167–201; idem: Mill’altre meraviglie ristrette in angustissimo spacio. Un repertorio dell’arte fiamminga e olandese a Verona tra Cinque e Seicento, Venice 2001; B. Aikema: ‘Tesori ponentini per la Serenissima. Il commercio d’arte iamminga a Ve nezia e nel Veneto fra Quattro e Cinquecento’, in E.M. Dal Pozzolo and L. Tedoldi, eds.: Tra Committenza e Collezionismo. Studi sul mercato dell’arte nell’Italia settentrionale durante l’età moderna. Atti del Convegno (Università degli Studi di Verona, 30 novembre–1 dicembre 2000), Vicenza 2003, pp.35–48; and E.M. Dal Pozzolo: ‘Cercar quadri e disegni nella Venezia del Cinquecento’, in ibid., pp.49–65. 24 See M. Lucco: ‘Venezia, 1500– 1540’, in M. Lucco, ed.: La pittura nel Veneto. Il Cinquecento, Milan 1996, I, pp.85 and 110, ig.140. the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 643 Two paintings by Lorenzo Lotto are similarities here with several key works by Lotto painted around 1535: Virgin and Child with two donors (1533–35; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles);25 the landscape in Portrait of a man, possibly Girolamo Rosati (1535; Cleveland Museum of Art);26 and that in Portrait of a man (Fig.6).27 A dating of the Charlecote painting to the early 1530s corresponds with what we know about the intarsia panels in Bergamo and their execution. Lotto furnished drawings for them in several instalments from 1524 until 1531, when work on the choir began.28 The episode of Samson with the foxes (‘Sansone caciando la golpe’ in Lotto’s own words)29 is one of a series of eight scenes on which the artist began to work seriously in October 1527. Their gestation was not without its complications, in part 25 P. Humfrey: Lorenzo Lotto, Bergamo 1997, pp.131–33. 26 Entry by E.M. Dal Pozzolo in B. Aikema, B.L. Brown and G. Nepi Sciré, eds.: exh. cat. Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano, Venice (Palazzo Grassi) 1999, p.384, no.91; see also E.M. Dal Pozzolo and M. Falomir, eds: exh. cat. Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits, Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) and London (National Gallery) 2018–19, pp.284–86, no.29. 27 Entry by P. Humfrey in D.A. Brown, P. Humfrey and M. Lucco: exh. cat. Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance, Washington (National Gallery of Art), Bergamo (Accademia Carrara) and Paris (Grand Palais) 1998– 99, p.197–98, no.42; see also Entry by M. Falomir in Dal Pozzolo and Falomir, op. cit.(note 26), pp.298–300, no.34. 28 Cortesi Bosco, op. cit. (note 19). 644 29 Ibid., I, p.486, and II, p.23 30 ‘molto travagliata da varie et strane perturbazione [sic]’, Cortesi Bosco, op. cit. (note 19), II, p.21, no.29. 31 Cortesi Bosco, op. cit. (note 19), II, p.23, letter no.32. 32 Ibid., I, pp.483–96. 33 Ibid., II, pp.16–17, 26. 34 F. Colalucci: ‘La rovina del palazzo’, in A. Gentili, ed.: Atti del convegno su Lorenzo Lotto, Bergamo (1998), Venezia Cinquecento 10, 20–21 (2000), pp.73–94. 35 A. Rubens: A History of Jewish Costume, London 1967. 36 This is a similar solution to that adopted by Bartolomeo Bellano in one of his reliefs in S. Antonio, Padua. See G. Lorenzoni: ‘Dopo Donatello: da Bartolomeo Bellano ad Andrea Riccio’, in G. Lorenzoni, ed.: Le sculture del Santo di Padova, Vicenza 1984, pp.95–107, esp. pp.100–01, ig.151; and the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 at least because, as Lotto declared in a letter written in 1529, he found his mind ‘much assailed by various and strange disturbances’. 30 After having sent his drawings to Bergamo for their translation into intarsia in 1531, at an unknown date he demanded their return.31 Today seven panels remain in S. Maria Magiore, comprising both principal scenes and their protective cover panels: The sacriice of Samson (main scene and cover); Samson chasing the foxes into the crops (main scene only); Samson slaying the Philistines with the ass’s jawbone (main scene and cover); and Samson betrayed by Delilah, blinded and at the mill (main scene and cover).32 However, letters sent by the artist from Venice to ‘the Regents of the Basilica’ between 13th and 16th September 1527 and also on 6th March 1532 reveal that he had V. Krahn: Bartolomeo Bellano. Studien zur Paduaner Plastik des Quattrocento, Munich 1988, pp.128–31. 37 ‘Coprirsi la testa con le mani, o con la veste [. . .] è gesto di timore’ (‘to cover your head with your hands, or with your garment [. . .] is a gesture of fear’), G. Bonifacio: L’arte de’ cenni, Vicenza 1616, p.31. On this text, of great importance for the understanding of gesture in the sixteenth century, see S. Gazzola: L’Arte de’ cenni di Giovanni Bonifacio: I: Introduzione e apparati, and II: Testo, Treviso (forthcoming 2018). 38 See N. Penny: ‘The night in Venetian painting between Bellini and Elsheimer’, in R.M. Letts, ed.: exh. cat. Italy by Moonlight. The Night in Italian Painting 1550–1850, Oxford (Ashmolean Museum) and London (Accademia Italiana delle Arti e delle Arti Applicate), 1990, pp.21–47 and 35–36. 39 F. De Carolis: Lorenzo Lotto. Il libro di spese diverse, Trieste 2017. 40 See P. Rossi, in R. Pallucchini and P. Rossi: Tintoretto. Le opere sacre e profane, Milan 1990, I, p.138 (where the painting is dated c.1543–44); and R. Echols and F. Ilchman: ‘Toward a new Tintoretto catalogue, with a checklist of revised attributions and a new chronology’, in M. Falomir, ed.: Jacopo Tintoretto. Actas del Congreso Internacional Jacopo Tintoretto (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007), Madrid 2009, pp.91–150, p.137. 41 See Turner, 2003, op. cit. (note 7), p.131. On Antaldi, see E.E. Gardner, C. Ceschi and K. Baetjer eds.: A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections, Vicenza 1998, I, p.38, and G. Tantillo: ‘Antaldo Antaldi’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome 1961, III, pp.427–28. Two paintings by Lorenzo Lotto 7. Detail of Fig.2. 8. Detail of Fig.2. made an eighth drawing of a scene from the story of Samson, illustrating ‘the ruining of the palace’.33 This work, if it ever existed in intarsia form, is now lost. It has been sugested that its appearance could be relected in an intarsia panel in another church in Bergamo, S. Bartolomeo. However, this hypothesis, never especially convincing, has become even less so with the identiication of the Charlecote painting, in which the episode is depicted in a quite diferent manner.34 The Charlecote painting of Samson destroying the Philistines’ palace is set on a sort of theatrical stage, with a tiled pavement depicted in perspective and with light coming in from the left and looding the foreground. As in its pendant, the hero wears a yellow tunic (Fig.8), a colour often used to mark out an individual as Jewish.35 Unlike Heemskerck’s treatment of this episode (in another lost composition known through an engraving by Galle), Samson is embracing not two columns, as indicated in the biblical passage, but only one, causing the left-hand part of the building to collapse (Fig.7).36 This enables the painter to focus our attention on the instant immediately preceding Samson being crushed to death by an enormous piece of cornice. Next to Samson, the ‘lad that held him by the hand’ runs away in an attempt to save himself, protecting his head with a gesture signifying fear.37 Where the columns along the left-hand side of the building are collapsing, ‘about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport’ (Judges, 16, 27) appear to be on the point of tumbling to earth. Lotto portrays them as a confusion of almost indistinguishable bodies, in which may just be made out an old man dressed in a red tunic, who lings up his arms in his desperation. The landscape in the background on the left is similar to that in the pendant; the addition of a pyramid lends the scene an oriental aspect. The right-hand side boasts a most remarkable passage of painting. Two igures, their arms raised, are running down the steps that lead from the irst loor to the ground, silhouetted against the light. They are painted in the same chestnut pigment used in the ramp and the columns of the logia, above which, in the darkening sky, the moon may be glimpsed behind a scudding cloud. The contrast between this poetic evocation of what is almost a nocturnal scene (a reminder of Lotto’s love of backdrops of this type) and the confused events on the opposite side lends the picture an efect of dramatic suspense.38 It is not known who commissioned the paintings. Lotto’s detailed book of accounts, Libro di spese diverse, which covers only the last two decades of his life (1538–56), does not mention them.39 Prior to the Libro, during the 1530s, Lotto lived in Venice before he moved to Treviso in 1532. The pictures may well have been painted in Venice, given that Jacopo Tintoretto’s Samson pulling down the temple (1543–44; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) employs some similar compositional devices to the Charlecote painting, such as Samson pulling down one column and the bodies tumbling from the other.40 Lotto sent works from Treviso to Le Marche, where he is documented as living from 1533. It is worth noting that one of the few Italians from whom Woodburn is known to have bought works was from the Marche region, the Marchese Antaldo Antaldi of Urbino, from whom he acquired ifteen drawings, all of which went to Thomas Lawrence.41 How the two paintings at Charlecote arrived in Genoa from Venice or Le Marche remains at present a mystery. the burlington magazine | 160 | august 2018 645