The Blinding of Samson

Rembrandt painted The Blinding of Samson in 1636, sending it as a gift to Constantijn Huygens — the poet, musician, and secretary to Prince Frederik Hendrik who had brokered Rembrandt's prestigious Passion series commission. The gift was an act of calculated flattery, but the painting itself is among the most viscerally shocking works in the entire Baroque tradition: Samson pinned to the ground while a Philistine drives a lance into his eye, Delilah escaping with his shorn hair and the shears still in her hand, soldiers restraining the blinded giant whose strength has been destroyed. The Caravaggio influence — the dramatic chiaroscuro, the theatrical violence, the figures pressing against the picture plane — is more evident here than in almost any other Rembrandt. Huygens had compared Rembrandt favorably to Rubens and Lievens in a remarkable essay, and the Blinding of Samson may have been Rembrandt's response: a demonstration that he could match Rubens's most dramatically extreme manner. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt has held the painting since the eighteenth century, making it one of the most important Rembrandts outside the Netherlands.

The explosive burst of light from the tent opening illuminates the horrible scene of blinding with almost unbearable clarity, while the dynamic composition of falling, lunging figures creates one of Rembrandt's most physically intense paintings.