It’s a very well done painting showing a lot of dramatic action in an exotic scenery. Delilah is mocking Samson who is overcome by a great number of enemies. There are strong influences of history and of oriental paintings which were very fashionable in this time.
He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony the leaders of the Protestant Reformation and it seems that many of the noble ladies in Saxony liked it to be depicted as Judith the savior of her people. Cranach did maybe more than a dozen which can be found now in museums over half of the world.
More interesting is therefore to compare the painting with another one depicting a normal Dutch doing her toilet.
The similarities are obvious, only that the biblical Bathsheba has more luxury, some handmaidens and shows more nudeness.
Lastman was a well known history painter working in Amsterdam where Rembrandt was one of his students. Ruth and Naomi are painted here as contemporary women. The only hint that the story happened in another place is the Italian landscape, which Lastman knew by his studies there.
Trautmann was fascinated by the dramatic effects of light, especially red light. So he painted gypsies and robbers by their campfires, burning cities and historical or legendary disasters like the burning Troy. Here he dedicated all his skills to the destruction of Sodom. Lot is fleeing with his daughters and the statue of the mother is left behind. But they are more an excuse to paint the burning Sodom.
Just as most of his contemporaries Altdorfer painted normally religious scenes, but probably he was much more interested in landscapes which in many cases dominated his compositions.
Kramskoj depicts here Herodias the mother of Salome who was the mastermind behind the intrigue against John the Baptist. But in legend and in art she is frequently mixed up with Salome.
