(Este 1631–1722 Venice)
Samson,
oil on canvas, 125.5 x 97 cm, unframed

Provenance:
sale, Auktionshaus Stuker, Bern, 13 November 1998, lot 388 (as Circle of Jusepe de Ribera);
Private European collection

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution to Antonio Zanchi and for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

The present painting, which appears to be unpublished, is an early work by the neo-Caravaggist painter Antonio Zanchi (1631-1722). Zanchi was born in Este, on the Venetian mainland, but worked mainly in Venice, where he died as a very old man after a successful career as the main representative of the so-called local school of the “tenebrosi”. Painters belonging to this artistic current were influenced by Jusepe de Ribera and the early work of Luca Giordano. The first representative of the school was the Genovese Giovanni Battista Langetti, whose work had a strong impact on the early Zanchi, as is clear from the present picture. In fact, the picture’s main characteristics, the irregular clair-obscur lighting and the realistic rendering of details are clearly reminiscent of Langetti. The same details, however, reveal that the artist here is Zanchi, whose work from the mid-1660s show the same characteristics as our painting (see in particular the two paintings decorating the portego of the Venetian Palazzo Albrizzi, showing, respectively, Alexander the Great before the Dead Body of Darius and Samson and Dalilah). As the present painting betrays a slightly more “painterly” style than these works, perhaps a date of around 1665-1670 might be suggested.