(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
David Fighting the Bear,
oil on canvas laid down on hardboard, 103 x 154 cm, framed

Provenance:
probably Comte de Meeüs d’Argenteuil, Brussels;
sale, Leys, Antwerp, 7-8 May 1979;
Private European collection

In May 1600, having completed his apprenticeship in Antwerp, Rubens left for the obligatory journey to Italy, where he attracted the attention of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga I, who called him to Mantua as a court painter. Rubens received valuable inspiration from the duke’s art treasures, which proved instrumental for his future career. In the present composition of David Fighting the Bear from circa 1615, Rubens translated his impressions of Giulio Romano’s and Luca da Faenza’s frescoes in the Loggia di Davide at the Palazzo del Tè in Mantua, where David can be seen in a very similar pose fighting the Lion. Like the fresco, the present painting seems to have been part of a more comprehensive series devoted to the prophet that was intended to highlight David’s courage and virtues.

The biblical source of the theme is contained in Samuel 17:34–36, with David describing his bravery to King Saul before marching off to fight the Philistine: “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear.” Rubens has depicted the athletic shepherd dressed in a loincloth and seizing the bear with both his arms at the neck, trying to pull it to the ground. To his left, in front of the flock, lies the sheep the shepherd has rescued from the bear’s claws. On the right-hand side of the group we can see the lion David killed. Behind the animal, the terrain opens up to a wide landscape in evening light.

An engraving by Willem Panneels documents how the composition was conceived. Towards the lower margin, the engraving deviates from the present painted version in several important details. It shows David as an athletic youth turned more to the front and seeking eye contact with the spectator. The wounded sheep lies between David’s feet, and the landscape in the background is missing, which suggests that Panneels had not worked from the painting, but from a preliminary study or oil sketch. In the finished painting, Rubens finally made several corrections in order to emphasise the fight and the entangled bodies of the main group.

This pictorial idea has been documented in several workshop replicas: in a version featuring approximately identical dimensions in the Spencer A. Samuels Gallery in New York, and in a smaller version that in 1979 belonged to the Dufrasne Collection in Ghent. Revisited by Rubens and translated into a new context, the central group was also used for the cycle The Labours of Hercules (Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, see J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, a Critical Catalogue, vol. 1, Princeton 1980, no. 242, vol. 2, fig. 276). A monumental version of the painting that was made around 1628 for Philip IV of Spain as a companion piece to Samson Fighting the Lion, and which is now lost, seems to have largely corresponded to the present painting in terms of composition.