Samson Pulls Down the House

Virgil Solis, 1565 · Judges 16:1

The passage

Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her.
Judges 16:1

About this woodcut

There is almost nothing in this frame except falling architecture. Column drums, capitals, shafts and blocks tumble across the whole picture at every angle, and underneath them, half buried, are heads, hands and legs. You have to hunt for Samson.

This is the most extreme composition in the whole Solis Bible. He has thrown out the horizon, the landscape and the hero and given the entire block to masonry in mid-air. It is closer to a modern comic panel than to anything else in the book, and it works because it refuses to show you the man who caused it.

1675 × 1219 pixels · public domain · free to use

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