[Laowang]

Gustav, you raise some interesting points that made me think a little bit more about the role of the keris in these paintings, of Rembrandt himself, and of art in this period. I also checked a couple more specific sources out of curiosity: Schama, Rembrandt's Eyes (Knopf, 1999) and Westermann, Rembrandt (Phaidon, 2000). Let me start furthest from the keris, and move back toward it.

Much art of this time employed allegory, but that doesn't mean all art did. While vanitas was a common theme in still lifes from the period, not every still life used it as a theme. Certainly a painting featuring a skull, rotten fruit, an hourglass, or watch, was a clear allegory of humanity's mortality, but not every still life does so. One shouldn't assume every component of every painting is loaded with symbolic portent. This same time period saw the birth of Dutch Realism in genre painting, portraiture, and landscape.

Regarding Rembrandt's still lives, the general scholarly consensus is that they were studies of emotion, and personae. He portrayed himself angry, happy, upset, etc., with curly hair, with facial hair, with a cloak, as an oriental potentate, etc. In the case of the still life with the keris, the keris helps create the persona.

Neither source I mentioned, nor a couple others I paged through, had much to say about Rembrandt using Christian allegory. Most scholars agree that Rembrandt was primarily interested in portraying the tragic as found in historical and Biblical scenes, and rendering that poetic idea in a dramatic fashion. You are right, however, the keris is not mere decoration, per se. It serves a symbolic function, but not as Christian allegory.

In Samson and Delilah, Schama says it much better than I ever could: "...the great potent curve of the hero's sword, unlike the weapon of the soldier in the background, deeply sheathed and hanging slackly below his buttocks. It doesn't take a higher degree in Freudian analysis to understand what Rembrandt is up to here: the narration of sexual drama through signs and euphemisms."

In the Blinding of Samson, the anachronistic combination of ethnographic weapons, European-style armor, and exotic costumes creates an imagined scene of Old Testament violence and gore; the keris and other objects are critical in creating a dramatic tableau that is convincing even though not historically accurate. The light falls from the top left of the canvas down toward Samson in a diagonal formed by Delilah's torso, Samson's leg, terminating via the mailed arm and keris at Samson's eye, and mirrored by the bhuj. The alien appearance of the keris, from a European perspective, heightens the drama of his blinding.

The keris appears to be the same in both paintings, and ties together two paintings painted eight years apart. One could certainly read it as a comment on Samson being undone by his own lust; Schama clearly believes that, and even in its original cultural milieu the keris is a phallic emblem.

Any interpretation of art certainly involves subjectivity. I do not mean to dismiss Jensen's reading out of hand. However, his reliance on a Christian allegorical interpretation, with the keris as a satanic emblem, is in contradiction with much of the established scholarship on Rembrandt.