Samson and Delilah

The subject of Samson and Delilah, drawn from the Old Testament (Judges 16: 19-20), was frequently treated in seventeenth-century painting. It allowed artists to illustrate the supremacy of passion, and its unfortunate consequences once reason lays dormant.

This painting was initially attributed to Cecco Bravo. There has always been a palpable resemblance between these two anti-classical, avant-garde painters, whose frescoes stand facing one another on opposite walls of the Giovanni da San Giovanni room in Palazzo Pitti.