Samson and Delilah

The subject of this painting is the betrayal of the Israelite judge Samson, who was regarded as invincible, by Delilah, a Philistine. After he revealed to Delilah the secret of the superhuman power given to him by God, his “unshaven seven locks of hair”, then fell asleep in her lap and had his locks shorn, she delivered him to his enemies, who captured and blinded him. The Berlin painting depicts the dramatic moment just before Samson’s hair is cut off and he is deprived of his enormous strength. He lies asleep, his back turned to the beholder, in Delilah’s lap. She sits in a frontal position, her head turned back towards the approaching Philistine, pointing to Samson’s hair, which she is carefully holding up. The figures of the Philistine creeping up with shears and the soldier with a drawn sword who is emerging from the dimly lit background indicate how the story will unfold: Samson will be overcome and taken prisoner.
Here Rembrandt created an astonishing early work: arranged in a logical sequence spatially, chronologically and in terms of subject, filled with tension, with a compelling handling of light that emphasises the drama of the moment, and with various motifs of movement that interlock and are mutually complementary. As technical examinations of the painting have demonstrated, the composition that we see today was, however, the product of a lengthy working process involving changes, some of which were fundamental.
The starting point for Rembrandt may well have been a grisaille work with the same subject that is attributed to him, held today in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Whereas the composition of the grisaille may be described as undecided, with its pictorial elements disconnectedly arranged one next to the other and the drama of the situation starkly exaggerated, in the work in Berlin the theme had undergone an evolution in which Rembrandt attempted to remove spatial and compositional faults and to improve the narrative structure. Rembrandt amended his first arrangement of the scene, a reposing triangular composition of little dynamism, into a tension-filled pictorial structure of two crossing diagonals, whose intersection represents not only the actual mid-point of the painting but also the thematic centre of the scene: Samson’s locks of hair. In this way, in the Berlin work Rembrandt succeeds in conveying the dramatic nature of the situation and agonising uncertainty about how it will end, and in replacing the previously artificial expressiveness of the grisaille with a subtle representation of human sensibilities. Constantijn Huygens presumably acquired the work for the stadtholder of the Netherlands shortly after it was painted, as it was the kind of the small-format piece that he admired with an intimate character, finely painted qualities and outstanding expressive power. It is mentioned in an inventory of the stadtholder as early as 1632. From there it passed the royal house of Prussia through inheritance. Katja Kleinert und Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019