''Samson and Delilah'' is a painting long attributed to the

Flemish Baroque painter Flemish Baroque painting refers to the art produced in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with ...

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

(1577–1640) and displayed in the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

. It dates from about 1609 to 1610. Two preliminary copies of the painting exist today: an ink and wash drawing on paper, and an oil sketch on wood panel. The oil sketch is currently on display in the

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

, while the ink sketch is held by a private collection in Amsterdam.

Narrative

Rubens portrays the moment when, Samson having fallen asleep on Delilah's lap, a young man cuts Samson's hair. Samson and Delilah are in a dark room, which is lit mostly by a candle held by an old woman to Delilah's left. Delilah is depicted with all of her clothes, but with her breasts exposed. Her left hand is on top of Samson's right shoulder, as his left arm is draped over her legs. The man snipping Samson's hair is crossing his hands, which is a sign of betrayal. Philistine soldiers can be seen in the right-hand background of the painting. The niche behind Delilah contains a statue of the

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

, the

Goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...

of love, and her son,

Cupid In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, lust, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus (mythology), Venus and the god of war Mar ...

. Notably, Cupid's mouth is bound, rather than his eyes. This statue can be taken to represent the cause of Samson's fate and the tool of Delilah's actions. The painting depicts an episode from the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

story of

Samson Samson (; , '' he, Šīmšōn, label= none'', "man of the sun") was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution o ...

and

Delilah Delilah ( ; , meaning "delicate";Gesenius's ''Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon'' ar, دليلة, Dalīlah; grc, label=Greek, Δαλιδά, Dalidá) is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved b ...

Judges 16
. Samson was a Hebrew hero known for fighting the

Philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when ...

. Having fallen in love with Delilah, who has been bribed by the Philistines, Samson tells her the secret of his great strength: his uncut hair. Without his strength, Samson is captured by the Philistines. The old woman standing behind Delilah, providing further light for the scene, does not appear in the biblical narrative of Samson and Delilah. She is believed to be a procuress, and the adjacent profiles of her and Delilah may symbolise the old woman's past, and Delilah's future.

Provenance

The painting was originally commissioned by

Nicolaas II Rockox Nicolaas Rockox (1560–1640), was a mayor of Antwerp. He was a close personal friend and important patron of Peter Paul Rubens. His residence in Antwerp is now a museum known as the Rockox House. He was knighted by Archduke Albert and Isabel ...

, Lord mayor of

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, for his

Rockox House The Snijders&Rockox House ( nl, Snijders&Rockoxhuis) is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium. It is located in two neighbouring townhouses formerly owned by the artist Frans Snyders (1579–1657) and the mayor Nicolaas Rockox (1560–1640). It is ow ...

. In addition to being a patron, Rockox was a close personal friend of Rubens. The painting was specifically intended to be placed above a 7-foot mantelshelf, where the painting would have been seen from below. The painting was publicly sold for charity when Rockox died in 1640, but it is unknown who the painting was sold to. In 1700, a panel named ''Samson and Delilah was'' bought by Prince Johann Adams Andreas I. This painting was likely Rubens' painting. However, when the painting was part of the Liechtenstein Collection in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

in the eighteenth century, the painter was identified as

Jan van den Hoecke Jan van den Hoecke ( – 1651) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and designer of wall tapestries. He was one of the principal assistants in Rubens' studio in the 1630s. He later traveled to Italy where he resided for a decade in Rome. He subseq ...

, who was a principal assistant of Rubens in the 1630s. The painting was then sold in 1880 in Paris, where it was later found by Ludwig Burchard in 1929. Eventually, the painting sold at auction in 1980 at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

, purchased by the

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

for $5 million. The painting was earlier attributed to the Dutch painter

Gerard van Honthorst Gerard van Honthorst (Dutch: ''Gerrit van Honthorst''; 4 November 1592 – 27 April 1656) was a Dutch Golden Age painting, Dutch Golden Age painter who became known for his depiction of artificially lit scenes, eventually receiving the nickn ...

, a painter who, like Rubens, worked in Rome in the shadow of

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

at the start of the 17th century. There has been some doubt cast over the attribution of the painting to Rubens, led by the artist and scholar of

Fayum portrait Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits are a type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden boards attached to upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of ...

s Euphronsyne Doxiades. She argues that it varies in details from copies of the original made during Rubens' lifetime, that it does not employ the layering technique of ''glazing'' common in oil painting at the time and mastered by Rubens, and that its provenance can not be documented with certainty between 1641 and 1929. A

dendrochronological Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmos ...

examination of the painting, however, confirms that the painting dates to the correct period, and the attribution has been accepted by a majority of the art historical scholarly community. However, in September 2021, an artificial intelligence analysis conducted by Dr. Carina Popovici and Art Recognition, a Swiss company based near Zurich, seemed to confirm doubters' beliefs when it was announced there is a 91% probability that artwork was not painted by Rubens.

Painting materials

The painting was cleaned and investigated in the National Gallery in 1983. It is noteworthy for the masterful and elaborate painting of the draperies and for the absence of blue pigments. Rubens employed

carmine Carmine ()also called cochineal (when it is extracted from the cochineal insect), cochineal extract, crimson lake, or carmine lake is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium complex derived from carminic acid. Specific code n ...

( kermes) lake,

lead-tin-yellow Lead-tin-yellow is a yellow pigment, of historical importance in oil painting, sometimes called the "Yellow of the Old Masters" because of the frequency with which it was used by those famous painters. Nomenclature The name lead-tin yellow ...

vermilion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color, color family, and pigment most often made, since ancient history, antiquity until the 19th century, from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide, which is toxic) and its correspondi ...

and

ochres Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

in addition to

lead white White lead is the basic lead carbonate 2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2. It is a complex salt, containing both carbonate and hydroxide ions. White lead occurs naturally as a mineral, in which context it is known as hydrocerussite, a hydrate of cerussite. It was ...

and charcoal black. However chemical pigment analysis was in its early stages back then and not enough samples for other works by Rubens were available, compared to what is available nowadays.

Legacy

Jacob Matham Jacob Matham (15 October 1571 – 20 January 1631), of Haarlem, was a famous engraver and pen-draftsman. Biography He was the stepson and pupil of painter and draftsman Hendrik Goltzius, and brother-in-law to engraver Simon van Poelenburgh, havi ...

, a Haarlem printmaker, used the Cincinnati oil sketch of ''Samson and Delilah'' as a

modello A modello (plural modelli), from Italian, is a preparatory study or model, usually at a smaller scale, for a work of art or architecture, especially one produced for the approval of the commissioning patron. The term gained currency in art circl ...

for an engraving he made in circa 1613. The engraving is a reverse image of ''Samson and Delilah''.Logan, Anne-Marie S., Michiel C. Plomp, and Peter Paul. Rubens. ''Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. 124-27. Print. The painting of ''Samson and Delilah'' can be seen in Frans Fracken the Younger's painting ''Banquet at the House of Burgomaster Rockox'', where the painting is hanging above the mantlepiece. Notably, this seventeenth-century depiction of the original Rubens painting shows Samson's foot included wholly within the frame of the composition. Compared to it the version now on display in London's National Gallery is cropped on both left and right sides. Also there are five soldier's in the doorway compared to three in Fracken's picture and in early engravings.

Notes

External links