Castello del Buonconsiglio monumenti e collezioni provinciali

Lunette: Delilah and Samson, Judith and Holophernes, Cleopatra

Next to the aforementioned lunettes that allude to music’s power of seduction, are other representations whose amorous content is more explicit: Delilah Cutting Samson’s Hair while he sleeps in the presence of a Cupid; the negative interpretation of Delilah as a cunning seductress and Samson as victim of an amorous passion, is evident, and in the end, brings him to ruin. The concept of a “woman’s power” over man is expressed with extraordinary efficiency in the lunette, above the staircase, of Judith and Holophernes. After having smitten the enemy-general Holophernes with her beauty, the Hebrew heroine Judith cuts off his head while he is in a drunken stupor in his camp tent, to present as a sign of victory to her people now liberated from the besieging enemy.

Even the lunette with Cleopatra (who kills herself with the self-inflicted bite of a poisonous snake after her Roman lover, Anthony, is defeated by Octavian) is an example of the consequence of an amorous passion transformed into madness.

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