Samson Destroying the Temple of Dagon

By 1659 the Dutch had been telling the Samson story for a generation. Rembrandt and others kept returning to the blinded strongman of the Book of Judges, and here Salomon de Bray, a Haarlem painter known for calm, classical order, takes the most violent moment of all. Samson has been captured and blinded by the Philistines, set to entertain them in the temple of their god Dagon. About 3,000 people crowd the roof. De Bray shows the instant Samson finds the two central pillars, braces an arm against each, and pushes. Above the panicking figures, the building is already giving way. It is a small oak panel, barely 65 centimetres tall, for a scene that kills everyone in it, the hero included.