'Fake' Rubens Debate Reignited by New Book

Gaudy colors, messy brushwork, even a set of missing toes. The debate about the authenticity of a Rubens's masterpiece "Samson and Delilah" was recently reignited with the release of a book alleging the painting hanging in London's National Gallery is really a copy.

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The work by the 17th century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens was purchased by the gallery in 1980 for $3.1 million, then the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

Every year tens of thousands of visitors view the work, lauded by the world-famous gallery for the artist's use of "highly contrasting light and shade and deep rich color work".

It's not a view shared, however, by Greek painter and art historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis, author of “NG6461: The Fake Rubens”.

Although the National Gallery remains convinced of the painting's authenticity, Doxiadis is adamant that it cannot have been painted by Rubens. “Rubens was meant to have painted a Samson and Delilah... (but) this painting in the National Gallery is certainly not it,” she said.

Based on the Old Testament story of the Israelite hero Samson, the painting depicts the moment an accomplice of his treacherous lover Delilah cuts off his hair, the source of his warrior power.

Rubens completed the canvas around 1609, but it mysteriously went missing for nearly three centuries before resurfacing in Paris in 1929.