Samson sleeps in Delilah's lap while a Philistine soldier cuts his hair.
His extraordinary strength — which comes from his uncut hair — is about to be gone.
Delilah sits very still, watching.
The painting is almost entirely in shadow, lit from a single source to the left, and the influence of Caravaggio — whom Rubens had studied closely in Rome — is unmistakable.
Rubens had just returned from eight years in Italy when he painted this, and it shows: the composition, the drama of the light, the physical weight of the sleeping figure all reflect what he had absorbed in Rome and Mantua.
He painted it for Nicolaas Rockox, his friend and the mayor of Antwerp, who hung it above the fireplace in his dining room.
Fun fact: the old woman watching from the doorway is thought to be a brothel keeper — the scene is set, in some readings, in a house of pleasure.
Rubens's workshop was famously prolific, but this painting, made early in his career, appears to be largely his own hand.
