Samson's fight with the lion (Musée Cluny Paris)
Samson's fight with the lion is a stained glass window that was formerly in the Sainte-Chapelle ( Paris ) and is now exhibited in the Musée national du Moyen Age in Paris. The stained glass window comes from a Paris workshop and was made between 1243 and 1248.
description
The round disk with a diameter of 59 cm was redesigned from two rectangular disks to form a medallion. The pane, made of colored smelted glass, has the original lead mesh and is very well preserved. In 1850 several windows from the Sainte Chapelle came to the museum, formerly known as the Musée de Cluny, and were reworked into medallions.
presentation
Today in the Sainte Chapelle, whose glass windows are currently undergoing a complete restoration, there is a cycle of pictures with scenes from the life of the hero Samson on the north side of the apse . Two rectangular windows from which the medallion was made were taken from it.
Samson wears a green robe and over it a red cloak with a yellow lining. He sits on the lion and tears open the lion's jaws with both hands. Behind it, a hilly landscape is indicated in shades of blue. Artichokes grow all around , so that a southern landscape should be shown. Samson's fight with the lion takes place on the way to the courtship to Timna: " The spirit of the Lord came over Samson, and Samson tore the lion with his bare hands as if he were tearing a goat " ( Judgment 14.6 EU ). Samson's life has rarely been depicted in the visual arts before.
literature
- Himmelslicht - European stained glass in the century of the Cologne cathedral building (1248–1349) . Edited by Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, Schnütgen-Museum Cologne, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-932800-02-8 , pp. 120–121.