1512
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
The Power of Women: Samson and Delilah is a 1512 by Lucas van Leyden, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a man sprawled asleep across a woman’s lap while she calmly cuts his hair with giant scissors. This is Samson and Delilah—an old Bible story where a woman betrays a strong man by snipping his magic hair. The scene was a hit in the 1500s; people loved tales of women outsmarting men. Lucas van Leyden carved it into wood, so the lines are sharp and black, like a comic strip. If you like the bold black-and-white look, check out the technique called chiaroscuro.
The publication of Albrecht Dürer's three impressive woodcut series in 1511— The Large Passion , The Apocalypse , and The Life of the Virgin —had an immediate impact on Northern painters such as Lucas. Lucas's first major designs for woodcuts were six large images whose theme was the power of women, that is, women's ability to dominate man by using wiles and beauty was a subject with broad, popular appeal at the time. The woodcut medium was eminently suitable for the bold, straightforward manner in which Lucas presented his subjects. The moment representing woman's treachery is always…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Lucas van Leyden (1494 – 8 August 1533), was a Dutch painter and printmaker in engraving and woodcut. Lucas van Leyden was among the first Dutch exponents of genre painting and was a very accomplished engraver.
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