Samson and Delilah

Mantegna painted this to fool you into thinking you are looking at carved stone. Working in Mantua in the 1490s, near the end of a long career, he was obsessed with the sculpture of ancient Rome and made a series of these grey, monochrome scenes that mimic a relief set against coloured marble. The story is the Old Testament betrayal, Delilah cutting the hair of the sleeping strongman Samson and with it the secret of his strength. Around the dead tree behind them Mantegna wound a heavy grapevine, and into the trunk he carved a Latin motto that reads, a bad woman is three times worse than the devil. He painted it thinly in glue on linen, which is why the surface looks so dry and stony, closer to a drawing than to his usual glowing oils.