home All News open_in_new Full Article

That muscular back! Those fleshy breasts! The National Gallery’s ‘fake’ Rubens looks very real to me

How can anyone call Rubens’ sumptuous masterpiece Samson and Delilah a ‘fake’ and ‘a shoddy artefact’? The Flemish master is simply doing a superb job of copying his own favourite outlaw artistSamson, a huge muscular hunk of a man, slumbers in the lap of his seducer Delilah, in a bedchamber sumptuously lit by candle. As Delilah looks down on the unconscious form of the great biblical hero, her accomplice is cutting the very tangled locks that hold his superhuman strength. Meanwhile, at the door, soldiers are waiting by torchlight. At the heart of it all is Samson’s rippled naked back, nestled on the woman’s pink silk skirts.Is this a painting by the Flemish baroque master Peter Paul Rubens? Hell, yes. The wonder is that anyone would ever think otherwise. And yet some do. Michael Daley and his campaigning group ArtWatch UK, and the art historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis (among others), are getting traction with their claims that the National Gallery owns a “fake” or “modern copy” and is c...


today 1 week ago attach_file Politics

attach_file Events
attach_file Sport
attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Events
attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Events
attach_file Politics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Events
attach_file Politics
attach_file Events
attach_file Events
attach_file Sport
attach_file Science
attach_file Economics
attach_file Politics
attach_file Events
attach_file Economics


ID: 1685557652
Add Watch Country

arrow_drop_down