Samson's Revenge

The Book of Judges tells how Samson, betrayed by Delilah, blinded and put in chains by the Philistines, got his strength back one last time and brought their temple down on himself and everyone inside. Platzer painted the moment in Vienna sometime in the 1730s, and his temple hardly looks ancient. The Belvedere compares it to a Baroque church, and in those years Vienna was building exactly such churches, with the Karlskirche rising from 1716 to 1737. Here are the same carved columns, balconies and heavy cornices, already breaking apart. Samson is braced between two pillars near the centre while statues and bodies drop from the upper storeys. Around him the feast is still going on, dishes flying and jugs rolling across the floor. Platzer put his signature on the base of the column under the hero's foot.