Samson Captured by the Philistines

Matthias Stom told this story twice, and his two canvases show one moment after the other. In the Book of Judges, Delilah lulls Samson to sleep on her knees and has the seven locks of his hair shaved off, the secret of his strength, and then the Philistines come in, seize him and put out his eyes. An earlier Samson and Delilah by Stom, now in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome, stops at the shearing. It is one of the very few pictures that can be tied to his years in Rome around 1630, and it measures about one metre by one and a quarter. In Turin the story has moved on to the capture, on a canvas more than twice as large each way, over two metres high and more than two and a half wide. The Galleria Sabauda dates it to about 1640 to 1650, the decade Stom spent mostly in Sicily. It hangs in Room 18 with other pictures by Caravaggio's followers, among them Riminaldi's David.