Simson und Delila

By the late 1630s Artemisia Gentileschi was running a busy workshop in Naples, then the largest city in Spanish-ruled Italy and full of painters chasing Caravaggio's dramatic light. She had come south for the commissions, and this Samson and Delilah is very much a Naples picture. She painted the quiet, treacherous moment: Samson asleep across Delilah's lap while a servant leans in with the shears, his strength about to leave him with his hair. A warm, raking light picks out Delilah's hands doing the work and leaves the rest of the small room in shadow, close to the Caravaggesque manner the city prized.