Samson threatens his father-in-law

Rembrandt painted this in 1635, a young star newly established in Amsterdam while the Dutch Republic was still locked in its long war of independence against Spain. The subject is one almost no one had painted before: Samson, back from a journey, finds that his father-in-law has married his wife off to another man, and here he storms the doorway in fury. Later he would burn the Philistines' fields in revenge. Rembrandt gives it to us as a single monumental figure, fist raised, caught in a hard shaft of light against the dark. One art historian has suggested the picture was made for a German prince, and that its warlike theme nods to real fighting then going on in the borderlands nearby. The old man peers out from behind a barely opened door.