All works in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum

Jan Lievens

Samson and Delilah (Judges 16:4-22)

c. 1626 - c. 1627

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 131 cm × width 111.5 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. SK-L-4365)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, upper left: IL
signature and date, upper right (formerly, false): Rembrandt f 1633

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges and corresponding holes have been preserved and there appear to be selvedges on the left and right. Cusping is present on all sides, and is clearly visible on the left and right and only vaguely at the top and bottom. The picture is stretched flat on the lining canvas and may have been originally stretched flat onto a strainer with strings, remnants of which are present in some of the tacking holes. Judging by the crack patterns parallel to the outer edges and in the centre, the bars of the original strainer were approx. 6 cm wide, with a horizontal crossbar of approx. 4 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends over the (original) tacking edges and almost up to the edges of the canvas, leaving a narrow strip of bare canvas exposed on all sides. The first, reddish layer, containing earth pigments, is followed by a light brown layer consisting of a brown matrix with some white and earth pigment particles. The third layer is grey and includes black, white and earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the (original) tacking edges. A brownish paint was used to sketch the composition, followed by a basic blocking in of the forms with colours, left visible to serve as mid-tones. The colour blocks were then worked up with freely and broadly applied, rather stiff paint, leaving visible brush marks in the paint surface. The paint layers are quite thick and opaque, although in the flesh colours the greyish ground shows through in the shadows. The wrinkled face of the Philistine was worked up with not completely blended brushstrokes of slightly contrasting pinkish and ochre colours. Impasto was used in the highlighted areas of Delilah’s yellow dress, in the lace of her collar and in her head decoration. The curls in Delilah’s hair and Samson’s beard were freely scratched into the wet paint, revealing the underlying layer. Several changes were made during the painting process. Samson’s neck and right shoulder were broadened, Delilah’s left hand was placed over the white of her blouse and her forearm over Samson’s elbow, her right thumb was shifted upwards and the tent flap in the upper right corner was painted out with the brown-green of the background.
Ige Verslype, 2025

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: I. Verslype, RMA, 29 September 2009
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-1627/1-3, 1 October 2009
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 October 2009

Condition

Good. The paint surface is slightly abraded throughout.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1968: canvas lined; complete restoration
H.H. Mertens, 1969: retouchings adjusted
W. Hesterman, 1973: varnish adjusted
H.C. Coen, 1977: complete restoration; removal of false signature and date
L. Kuiper, 1977: complete restoration; removal of false signature and date
M. Zeldenrust, 1977: complete restoration; removal of false signature and date
L. Sozzani, 1992: paint consolidated; retouchings adjusted

Provenance

...; from the dealer John St. Hensé, Bradford, fl. 400, to the museum, May 1895¹

Object number: SK-A-1627

The artist

Jan Lievens (Leiden 1607 - Amsterdam 1674)

According to the account published by the Leiden burgomaster and town chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers in 1641, Jan Lievens was born on 24 October 1607 in Leiden. His parents were Lieven Hendricxz, an embroiderer, and Machtelt Jansdr van Noortsant. When he was 8, his father apprenticed him to the Leiden artist Joris van Schooten, ‘from whom he learned the principles of both drawing and painting’.² About two years later, in 1617 or 1618, the child prodigy was sent to study with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Upon his return to Leiden at the age of 12 Lievens set up a studio in his father’s house. Although not documented and not mentioned by Orlers, the style of his early works suggests that Lievens probably also spent some time in Utrecht and possibly Antwerp in the early 1620s. Indeed, instead of the small-scale, multi-figure histories for which Lastman is well known, Lievens’s early output consists primarily of broadly rendered, large-scale compositions with only one or a few half-length figures, shown life-size or larger than life. Lievens’s choice of biblical, allegorical and genre subjects in the 1620s also reflects the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, Gerard van Honthorst, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen, as well as that of the great Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. In addition to history and genre pieces, the young Leiden artist executed tronies, still lifes and portraits in this period, and became a talented printmaker. As his earliest signed and dated painting is from 1629,³ the chronology of the first decade of his output has been, and still is, open to debate.

Lievens began working closely with Rembrandt after the latter arrived back in Leiden around 1625 from a six-month apprenticeship with Lastman in Amsterdam. While the notion that the two shared a studio in Leiden is not supported by the early accounts of their careers – in fact, Orlers explicitly states that Rembrandt ‘decided to engage in and practice the art of painting entirely on his own’ after his return – Lievens and Rembrandt often treated the same subject matter, for example Samson and Delilah, the raising of Lazarus and Christ on the Cross.⁴ The fijnschilders style that the two artists developed together in the second half of the 1620s was already making it difficult for appraisers and connoisseurs to differentiate their hands during their lifetimes. Lievens’s early work was much sought after, at first by Leiden patrons, including his earliest biographer, Orlers. In 1628, Lievens and Rembrandt were visited in their respective studios by the stadholder’s secretary, Constantijn Huygens, the most powerful cultural broker in the Dutch Republic. Lievens ingratiated himself with Huygens by requesting to paint his likeness,⁵ and soon thereafter the court in The Hague began to acquire his work and offer him commissions. Some of Lievens’s pictures were also acquired by Sir Robert Kerr, representative of the English crown in The Hague, and in 1631 the exiled king of Bohemia, Frederick V, and his consort Elizabeth, a sister of King Charles I of England, commissioned Lievens to portray their son Prince Charles Louis, who was studying in Leiden at the time.⁶

In February 1632, Lievens moved to London where, according to Orlers, he painted portraits of King Charles I and his family, as well as various lords. Those works have not survived and little is known about Lievens’s output and career during his English period, which lasted until 1635. It was perhaps Anthony van Dyck’s return to England in the spring of 1635 that prompted Lievens to leave for Antwerp, where he registered as a member of the Guild of St Luke in that year and acquired citizenship in December 1640. In 1638, he married Susanna de Nole, daughter of the sculptor Andries Colijns de Nole. His father-in-law’s connections may have helped Lievens secure the commissions for two large altarpieces for the Jesuit churches in Antwerp and Brussels.⁷ Also in this period Lievens carried out a commission for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and painted a monumental Magnanimity of Scipio for the council chamber of Leiden Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders and awarded a gold medal.⁸ Besides history pieces, Lievens executed tronies and genre scenes during his Antwerp period, and branched out in the field of painting to produce landscapes and in the graphic arts into the medium of the woodcut. He completely abandoned his early style in favour of one heavily indebted to Adriaen Brouwer, Van Dyck and Rubens.

In 1644, Lievens moved with his wife and child to Amsterdam, where he first rented a room as either living or studio space from the artist couple Jan Miense Molenaer and Judith Leyster. Susanna de Nole died shortly afterward and Lievens married Cornelia de Bray, daughter of an Amsterdam notary, in 1648. Probably in the same year, he was commissioned to paint one of the works, The Five Muses, for the cycle of allegories commemorating the life of Frederik Hendrik in the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Huis ten Bosch, which was completed in 1650.⁹ Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms’s eldest daughter Louise Henriette married the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, in 1646. In 1652, Lievens was invited to contribute to the decorations of their country seat, Schloss Oranienburg near Berlin. He moved there in 1653 and executed a large portrait historié of the couple as well as mythological scenes.¹⁰

Lievens returned to the Dutch Republic and resided in The Hague from 1654 until March 1659 at the latest. In 1656, he was involved in setting up Confrerie Pictura, a new painters’ confraternity that broke away from the local Guild of St Luke. Lievens received several important private and public commissions in these years, not only in The Hague but also in Amsterdam. For example, he was commissioned in 1655 to execute a large overmantel of Quintus Fabius Maximus and his Son for the burgomasters’ chamber of Amsterdam Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders.¹¹ Although he remained a non-resident member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague in 1660-61, Lievens moved back to Amsterdam by March 1659, probably with an eye to securing the commission for the series of eight monumental paintings for the lunettes of the Burgerzaal (Citizens’ Hall) in the Town Hall. After Govert Flinck, who had been awarded that project, died in 1660 before being able to execute them, Lievens was given the task of painting one of the lunettes, Brinio Raised on a Shield, for which he earned 1,200 guilders.¹² Another important assignment in the 1660s was for an enormous Mars (Allegory of War) for Pieter Post’s newly constructed Statenzaal, the assembly room of the States of Holland and West Friesland in the Binnenhof in The Hague.¹³ Lievens completed this canvas in 1664 and in the same year set off for Cleves, probably in the hope of being selected to work on the decorations of Johan Maurits of Nassau’s newly renovated Schwanenburg Castle, another architectural project based on designs by Pieter Post. Lievens’s sojourn in Cleves is veiled in mystery and it is only known that by the spring of 1666 he was back in Amsterdam, where he remained until 1669. He spent the last five years of his life constantly on the move, living alternately in The Hague, Leiden and Amsterdam. Due at least in part to non-payments by some of his patrons, which was exacerbated by the economic malaise brought on by the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74), Lievens experienced financial problems during much of his later career and died in poverty in Amsterdam in June 1674.

Throughout his career Lievens had several pupils, none of whom became significant artists in their own right. It was probably as early as his Leiden period that he instructed his younger brother Dirk (c. 1612-1650), who is known to have executed a few portraits around 1640. The otherwise obscure Hans van den Wijngaerde, who trained with Lievens in Antwerp for six years beginning in 1636, is his earliest documented pupil. According to Houbraken, who does not specify where the apprenticeship took place, Hendrik Schoock (1630-1707) from Utrecht was with Lievens after having studied with Abraham Bloemaert and before going on to Jan Davidsz de Heem. Based on Schoock’s date of birth, this would have been either in Antwerp, where De Heem was also active, or in Amsterdam shortly after Lievens moved there in 1644. In 1662, Erick van den Weerelt (1648-1715) was apprenticed by the Amsterdam Civic Orphanage to Lievens for a period of three years. The contract was extended for another three years in 1665. Lievens’s use of student help to execute some of his works is documented. According to his own testimony, his eldest son, Jan Andrea (1644-1680), painted the 1666 Geographer, an overmantel in the Gemeenlandshuis of the Rijnland polder board in Leiden, after his father’s design and with his assistance.¹⁴ He is also recorded in Lievens’s studio in Amsterdam in 1669 together with two Jewish assistants, Aron de Chavez (c. 1647-1705) and Jacob Cardoso Ribero (c. 1643-?), and a wealthy amateur, Jonas Witsen (1647-1675). Lievens’s last documented pupil was Dionys Godijn (c. 1652/57-after c. 1682), whose father apprenticed him to the master in The Hague for a period of two years beginning in 1670.

From contemporary sources it appears that Lievens was rather arrogant. Huygens detected this personality defect even in the youthful artist: ‘My only objection is his stubbornness, which derives from an excess of self-confidence’.¹⁵ Judging from a remark made by Sir Robert Kerr in a 1654 letter to his son, Lievens retained a sense of excessive self-esteem in his maturity as well: ‘[he] has so high a conceit of himself that he thinks there is none to be compared with him in all Germany, Holland, nor the rest of the seventeen provinces.’¹⁶

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

References
J.J. Orlers, Beschrijving der stad Leyden, Leiden 1641, pp. 375-77; P. Angel, Lof der Schilderkonst, Leiden 1642 – trans. M. Hoyle and annot. H. Miedema, ‘Philips Angel, Praise of Painting’, Simiolus 24 (1996), pp. 227-58, esp. pp. 245-46; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 186; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 212, 296-301; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder zinspreuk ‘Wt jonsten versaemt’, II, Antwerp/The Hague 1876, pp. 61, 69, 139; F.J.P. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerp 1883, pp. 863-66; J.A. Worp, ‘Constantijn Huygens over de schilders van zijn tijd’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 106-36, esp. pp. 125-31; E.W. Moes, ‘Jan Lievens’, Leids Jaarboekje 4 (1907), pp. 136-64; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 186-227; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIII, Leipzig 1929, pp. 214-15; H. Schneider, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Haarlem 1932, pp. 1-10, 277-85, 289-303; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, pp. 1764-72; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986’, Oud Holland 102 (1988), pp. 322-33, esp. pp. 327-28; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, IV, Brussels 1989, p. 224, no. 1034; R. de Jager, ‘Meester, leerjongen, leertijd: Een analyse van zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse leerlingcontracten van kunstschilders, goud- en zilversmeden’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 69-111, esp. pp. 74, 98-99, doc. nos. 11, 12, 15, p. 102, doc. no. 31; P.J.M. de Baar and I.W.L. Moerman, ‘Rembrandt van Rijn en Jan Lievens, inwoners van Leiden’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 24-38; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, V, Brussels 1991, pp. 100-01; Domela Nieuwenhuis in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIX, New York 1996, pp. 347-50; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, pp. 352-53; A.K. Wheelock Jr, ‘Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 1-27

Entry

The subject of this painting, Delilah’s betrayal of the Nazarene Samson, is one of the greatest Old Testament stories of female treachery, and served since the Middle Ages as a warning to men against the seductive power of women. With a promise of money, the lords of the Philistines, who had dominion over Israel and were thus Samson’s sworn enemies, prevailed upon Samson’s lover Delilah to ‘entice him, and see wherein his great strength lieth’ (Judges 16:5). After three unsuccessful attempts, she accuses Samson of not truly loving her, and he finally confides to her: ‘if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man’ (Judges 16:17). Upon learning his secret, Delilah ‘made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him’ (Judges 16:19).

One imagines it was paintings such as this one by Jan Lievens, with its larger-than-life-size, half and three-quarter length figures, that led Constantijn Huygens to comment in his autobiographical sketch: ‘Rather than depicting his subject in its true size, he [Lievens] chooses a larger scale’.¹⁷ Gerard van Honthorst’s Samson and Delilah, now in Cleveland,¹⁸ has been put forward as Lievens’s source for the use of monumental figures pressed up against the picture plane, the vertical format and expressive chiaroscuro.¹⁹ Samson’s pose, with his head resting on his left arm, is also common to both works, as is the number of figures shown. Judson, however, dated the canvas in Cleveland to around 1616, that is to Honthorst’s Roman period.²⁰ As Lievens never travelled to Italy, the question arises whether he would have been familiar with this painting.²¹ Because the similarities are so great – especially Samson’s pose and the way his body is cropped off by the frame – one is inclined to think that the young Leiden artist must have seen a copy after Honthorst’s picture in the Dutch Republic,²² or one of the other versions by Honthorst now known only from early nineteenth-century auction records.²³

Even more problematic is the claim that a Samson and Delilah of 1619 by Guercino was the source for the profile view of Delilah and the placement of Samson’s right arm in Lievens’s canvas.²⁴ While the former motif was much more probably inspired by Jacob Matham’s well-known print after Rubens’s painting of the subject from around 1609-10,²⁵ the positioning of Samson’s right arm follows neither that in Guercino’s picture nor Matham’s engraving exactly. A more likely explanation is that Lievens simply came up with it himself, perhaps with the aid of models in his studio.²⁶

His borrowings from other versions of the theme notwithstanding, Lievens’s Samson and Delilah represents a significant shift in focus. Although Honthorst departed from the biblical text in showing Delilah herself and not a Philistine carrying out the deed, both he and Rubens chose the moment in the story at which Samson’s hair is shorn. In Lievens’s painting, Delilah shoots a compelling glance at the Philistine as she hands him the shears. The latter’s look of terror is warranted, as Samson had wreaked vengeance on the Philistines in the past and Delilah had already failed three times to uncover the true secret of his strength. Not only did Lievens choose a different moment in the story, but his figures also differ from the more idealized types in the pictures by Rubens and Honthorst. Lievens’s rather plain-looking Delilah is a far cry from the voluptuous bare-bosomed seductress in Matham’s print. Although she is dressed somewhat similarly to Honthorst’s Delilah, here she does not have a décolleté. Lievens, who did not shy away from painting exposed breasts, perhaps purposely played down Delilah’s sensuality so as better to concentrate on her tension-filled interaction with the Philistine. That idea may have been derived from a Samson and Delilah grisaille in the Rijksmuseum of around 1626-27 now attributed to Rembrandt,²⁷ which in turn was probably inspired by a 1626 print by Matthäus Merian.²⁸ The grisaille was probably also the source for the Philistine’s apprehensive gesture in the Lievens, and the curtains framing him.

The present canvas had a false Rembrandt signature and the date ‘1633’ when it was offered to the Rijksmuseum in 1895 by the dealer John St. Hensé as a work from Rembrandt’s circle.²⁹ However, Johan Philip van der Kellen, the then director of the Rijksmuseum Print Room, recognized Lievens’s hand in it, which was confirmed soon thereafter with the uncovering of that artist’s monogram.³⁰ While that attribution has never been contentious, there has been some discussion about where this Samson and Delilah fits in the chronology of Lievens’s early production, with dates ranging from 1623 to 1630. In assigning the painting to around 1630, Sumowski compared it with the 1631 Prince Charles Louis of the Palatinate with his Tutor Wolrad von Plessen in Los Angeles³¹ and Preciosa and Doña Clara in Berlin, from around the same year.³² While the Rijksmuseum Samson and Delilah shares with these two pictures the combination of a profile figure and one shown frontally, the way in which they are uncomfortably crammed together comes closer to Lievens’s early compositions featuring multiple figures, some of whom are also often seen from the side. The accomplished foreshortening of the young Charles Louis’s left arm in the Los Angeles painting has no parallel in Delilah’s oddly truncated torso and the strange placement of her left arm. The latter was not reserved, so was not part of Lievens’s initial plan.³³ At the onset, the arm on which Samson rests his head was perhaps intended to be her left one. Although the result of a compositional change, Delilah’s left arm is as infelicitously related to the rest of her body as the raised forearm of Lievens’s singing man in Kingston, which is unanimously assigned to around 1624-25, is to his.³⁴ The execution of Delilah’s dress can also be better compared to the red overgarment worn by the Kingston singer than to the more meticulous, exquisitely shimmering fabrics in the Los Angeles and Berlin pictures. The soft, somewhat doughy folds of the other clothing in Samson and Delilah are closest to those of the Bamberg Evangelists, which most scholars date to around 1626-27.³⁵ The skin of Samson and Delilah has been rendered smoothly, yet softly as in the Bamberg series, and lacks the porcelain appearance of Lievens’s later paintings. Finally, the subdued colouring of the present canvas matches the Bamberg suite better than the artist’s earliest works, with their shrill palettes, such as A Man Singing in Kingston. This Samson and Delilah should therefore be placed somewhere between the latter picture and the Bamberg Evangelists, that is to around 1626 or 1627. Such a dating would accord well with the likely role in the genesis of Lievens’s Samson and Delilah played by the aforementioned Rijksmuseum grisaille of the subject attributed to Rembrandt,³⁶ which can be assigned to the same period.

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

H. Schneider, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Haarlem 1932, pp. 94-95, no. 13; M. Kahr, ‘Rembrandt und Delilah’, The Art Bulletin 55 (1973), pp. 240-59, esp. pp. 240-41; H. Schneider and R.E.O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Amsterdam 1973, pp. 94-95, no. 13; Klessmann in R. Klessmann (ed.), Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1979, p. 66, no. 16; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1778, no. 1185, with earlier literature; H. Gutbrod, Lievens und Rembrandt: Studien zum Verhältnis ihrer Kunst, Frankfurt 1996, pp. 143-49; Treanor in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 110-11, no. 15; Manuth in I. Ember (ed.), Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts) 2014-15, p. 316, no. 79; B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt: With a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Works 1623-1632, Petersberg 2016, pp. 56, 67, 71-74, 85, 101, 114, 115, 241, no. 64

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 161, no. 1458; 1934, p. 167, no. 1458; 1960, p. 176, no. 1458; 1976, p. 347, no. A 1627; 1992, p. 63, no. A 1627

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2025, 'Jan Lievens, Samson and Delilah (Judges 16:4-22), c. 1626 - c. 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20028190

(accessed 6 December 2025 21:36:44).