La cattura di Sansone

In April 1609 Antwerp got its first pause in 40 years of war, when Spain and the Dutch Republic signed a truce meant to last 12 years. Money came back into the city, and Rubens, home from eight years in Italy, had more commissions than he could handle. This small panel is a sketch for a larger picture ordered by Nicolaas Rockox, the burgomaster of Antwerp and the most useful patron he had. It shows Samson seized by Philistine soldiers in the moment after Delilah has cut his hair away.

Working fast, he reached for a board he had already used. Underneath is an abandoned study for his Adoration of the Magi of 1609, the one now in Madrid. Rubens turned the panel upside down before starting again, and at the upper right the blue of the Virgin's robe still shows through the paint.