In this woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, the episode of the Old Testament is depicted in which Samson in the vineyard of Timnah encounters a roaring lion and, as it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done" (Judges 14, 5-6). The work is dated around 1497-98, the same years in which the artist began working on the series of the Great Passion. It is part of a group of large loose woodcuts made between the last decade of the 15th century and the first of the 16th century, signed with the monogram AD, which contributed to the spread of Dürer's inventions and testify to his continuous updating on the ways of art contemporary to him or slightly earlier. In fact, it has been suggested that the head of Samson may be a reference to Leonardo da Vinci's Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns, a drawing preserved in Venice (Gallerie dell'Accademia, inv. no. 231) and perhaps already present in that city at the time of Dürer's first trip to Italy (1494-95). The woodblock is preserved at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (inv. no. 19.73.255).