A bearded face, long curls held by a headband.
Bible in art · Judges
Samson and the Lion
Dürer · c. 1497–98
The Cleveland Museum of Art
A single large woodcut, made by Dürer in Nuremberg around 1497–98, at the time of the Apocalypse.
Samson sits astride the lion and tears its jaws apart with his bare hands, his long curly hair tied with a band. Behind him spreads a wide valley with a lakeside town and, high on the right, a castle on a cliff.
From the text
- A young lion comes roaring at him near the vineyards of Timnah (Judges 14:5)
- He tore it apart with his bare hands, “as one would tear a young goat” (Judges 14:6)
The artist’s own
- Samson pulling the jaws apart — an old way of showing this scene
- A German landscape with a town, ships and a castle
Details
Samson
The jaws
His hands force the lion’s mouth wide open.
The town
A walled town by the water, a boat on the lake.
The castle
A castle stands on a rock at the top right.
Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1924.310) · Woodcut · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).