Death Nag: Altdorfer’s 1506 Delilah and the Real Power of Women

Abstract

Amid variants of the misogynistic motifs known as “Power of Women” or Weibermacht popular in early modern northern Europe appears an early unique interpretation: Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1506 lively, scrawly chiaroscuro drawing Samson and Delilah (fig. 1). It would be unusual at this time to depict a historical (or biblical-historical) woman as anything but a moral example of good or bad behavior. Delilah, lethal deceiver of the Old Testament hero Samson, finds herself squarely in the category of “bad.”Why, then, does Altdorfer’s Delilah appear to be attempting to warn a sleeping, unshorn Samson of the approach of Philistine soldiers?