The Blinding of Samson

Rembrandt painted this in 1636, and he seems to have painted it partly to impress a patron he had kept waiting. He owed the court in The Hague a series of religious pictures and was running late, so through their secretary, the poet and diplomat Constantijn Huygens, he sent this huge canvas as a kind of extravagant apology. It is one of the most violent paintings of its century. Samson has just been betrayed by Delilah, who cut his hair and with it his strength. Soldiers have wrestled him to the ground and one drives a blade into his eye while another chains his wrist. Delilah runs off to the left, shears in one hand and his cut hair in the other, glancing back. The whole scene is lit like a stage. A shaft of daylight pours in from the tent opening, and everything else drops into darkness so that your eye goes straight to the horror at the centre. No earlier painter had chosen this exact instant of the story.