The Blinding of Samson is a 1636 painting by Rembrandt, now in the Städel (in Frankfurt). The painting is the first of its kind in pictorial tradition. No other artist at the time had painted this specific narrative moment.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Dutch. (January 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Dutch Wikipedia article at [[:nl:De blindmaking van Simson]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|nl|De blindmaking van Simson}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts The Blinding of Samson, Artist ...

The Blinding of Samson
Artist	Rembrandt
Year	1636
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	219.3 cm × 305 cm (86.3 in × 120 in)
Location	Städel, Frankfurt am Main

Close

This painting was a gift to the House of Orange, Rembrandt's current patron of a few commissioned paintings, via its secretary Constantijn Huygens, as an excuse for the delay of the commissioned Passion paintings. Later it was acquired by Friedrich Karl von Schönborn and remained in the Palais Schönborn-Batthyány in Vienna until it was acquired by the Städel in 1905.

The Blinding of Samson shows an episode from the biblical story of Judge Samson. Samson was a Nazarite, which gave him special strength when he kept three conditions, such as not cutting his beard and hair. The scene depicted follows the cutting of Samson's hair by Delilah, who betrayed him to the Philistines. This aspect of the plot is repeated in this painting, since Delilah is shown in the background fleeing with a shock of hair and scissors in hand.^[1]

Rembrandt also portrayed different aspects of the plot with the other characters. After his hair had been cut off, Samson had to be wrestled to the ground and tied up before his eyes were gouged out. This is what Rembrandt conveyed through the combatants, one of whom fearfully enters the scene, another holds Samson to the ground, one ties him up and one gouges out his eyes. The immediate action of the painting is the climax of the story, the blinding with the penetrating knife and the spurting blood. However, the viewer can reconstruct the entire action via the image.^[2]

• List of paintings by Rembrandt