Is the Most Valuable Rubens at the National Gallery Fake? The Mystery of the Cut-Off Foot and the Spanish Connection to Sorolla

Upon entering Room 15 of the National Gallery in London, visitors are drawn hypnotically towards the painting at the back. Samson, a giant of muscles with his torso exposed, lies exhausted in the lap of Delilah, who reveals her bare breasts. An accomplice of the beautiful Philistine cuts the hair of the Israelite colossus to strip him of his strength. Samson and Delilah is one of the thirty masterpieces in its permanent collection that the British national gallery proudly showcases, attributed to the master of Flemish Baroque, Peter Paul Rubens. The controversy over the authorship of the work, which has lasted nearly forty years, is one of the most intense and violent in the art world.

“It was the first time I saw it, in the blink of an eye. It was 1987, at the National Gallery. I immediately realized it wasn’t a Rubens. It was a cheap copy of the kind you see displayed on Sundays on Bayswater Street [where painters hang their works on the fence surrounding London’s Hyde Park],” explains the painter and art historian Eufrosine Doxiadis over the phone from Athens, who has spent half her life disputing the painting’s authorship and leads an international group of critics. All her decades of research have been poured into a book, NG6461: The Fake Rubens (NG6461: the Fake Rubens, referring to the work’s catalog number at the National Gallery). Published last March, it has reignited the battle between the artist and the London museum.

To fully understand this story, it’s essential to reconstruct the facts, closely examine the brushstrokes of the painting, travel back in time, and, above all, approach both certainties and theories supporting each side with the necessary dose of skepticism.

Rubens painted Samson and Delilah at the beginning of his mature period, in the early 17th century. He had just returned from a long trip to Italy, where he learned from the Renaissance masters like Michelangelo and Leonardo, but was most seduced by a transgressive, revolutionary artist, fierce in light and stroke, named Caravaggio.

It’s very likely that the work was commissioned by his friend and mentor, the mayor of Antwerp, Nicolaas Rockox, whose house is now a museum. No one doubts that the painting existed. However, upon Rockox’s death in 1640, like many other famous paintings, it disappeared.

For more than two centuries, the only two pieces of evidence of the work’s existence were indirect. First, the painting titled Dinner at the House of Mayor Rockox, by the painter Frans II Francken. It belongs to the genre dubbed “wonder room painting,” highly sought after by private collectors wanting to showcase, in an inventory image, all their accumulated riches. In this case, the key is that in the center of the room, among other reproductions, Rubens’ Samson and Delilah can be seen.

The second piece of evidence is a print of the painting made by the Dutch master engraver Jacob Matham, in 1613, most likely commissioned by Mayor Rockox himself.

The Reappearance and Initial Doubts

Samson and Delilah did not resurface until 1929, in Paris. It was then that a Rubens expert, the German Ludwig Burchard, confirmed its authorship. It was a historic finding in the art world. However, the problem arose when, after the expert’s death in 1960, it was discovered that he had certified many false ‘Rubens’ to enrich himself.

In 1980, the National Gallery used its funds to acquire the artwork at a Christie’s auction. It paid £2.5 million (almost €3 million at current exchange rates). A small sum compared to today’s prices, but a record at that time, grabbing headlines.

Since then, the museum has been plagued by a curse surrounding the painting that it has never been able to entirely resolve.

Let’s start with the revealing details that, according to the accusers, expose the work’s falsity. The first, perhaps the most striking and one that can more easily convince an art novice: Samson’s foot. In the painting displayed at the National Gallery, the frame crops the toes of the giant’s right foot. It resembles those amateur photos where the composition is incorrect, and a hand or feet are cut off.

However, both in Matham’s engraving and in Francken’s canvas, the foot appears complete. Hands and feet are extremely difficult to draw or paint. Rubens had mastered those details, to the point of dedicating a work to the subject called Study of Feet. It is strange that, with that skill, he opted to make the toes disappear, thereby disrupting the balance of the composition.

And there are more clues. In the upper left corner of the painting, a statue of Venus and Cupid appears. The brush strokes seem crude, poorly defined, in a gray tone.

“Rubens even wrote a book in Latin in which he developed an entire theory on how to paint statues, De Imitatione Statuarum,” explains the Greek historian. “And he always used ochre and earth tones, never black and white.”

At the back of the painting, on the right, like in Las Meninas by Velázquez, there is a door. Five people watch the scene. One of them looks directly at the viewer, as if seeking their complicity. In Matham’s engraving or Francken’s painting, there are only three witnesses. This discrepancy would be yet another piece of evidence supporting Doxiadis’s surprising theory about the authorship of the work, which she believes is a copy.

According to the Greek author, the painting emerged from a group of disciples gathered in Madrid in the early 20th century around the painter Joaquín Sorolla. Copying classics was a good way to practice, and Rubens, due to his mastery, was a favorite among the students. The author of the copy would have been Gaston Lévy, a collector and curator who spent his last days in New York, but learned in his youth from the post-impressionist painter from Valencia.

To demonstrate the good faith of a copy, and to make clear that no malicious imitation is intended, it is an unwritten rule in the art world to include some subtle difference from the original work that reveals plagiarism: for example, a cut-off foot or a conspiratorial face looking at the viewer.

“We discovered Lévy’s name among Burchard’s notes—the German expert who confirmed the work’s authenticity in 1929—back in 2000, among documents at the National Gallery. ‘Purchased in Paris from the restorer Gastón Lévy,’ he had handwritten,” Doxiadis recounts.

To top off the controversy, the historian asserts that the piece exhibited at the National Gallery is not an oil on oak wood like the historical original, but a canvas glued to a board that was later reinforced from behind with another wooden plate. She insists that museum officials refuse to disprove her claim using technology.

The Battle of the National Gallery

The museum has dedicated years of work by its experts to confirming the authorship of its flagship painting and silencing what they consider baseless conspiracy theories. Recently, they published an exhaustive report signed by three academics, led by Gregory Martin, one of the world’s leading experts on Rubens. “This extensive study, directed by our team of conservators and scientists, which uses the most modern imaging and analysis techniques, offers very conclusive evidence of authorship, as well as the transparency of our research efforts,” wrote the museum’s director, Gabriele Finaldi, to The Guardian just over a week ago, which had also reported on the controversy. The National Gallery has declined to speak with Adolfo Kunjuk News but has forwarded the technical report from its experts to this correspondent.

Many specialists and critics have sided with the British gallery, defending Rubens’ authorship. In the art world, when evidence is not entirely conclusive, intuition, knowledge, and imagination prevail. And here is where a painter mentioned at the beginning of this story reemerges: Caravaggio. Perhaps he is the final key to understanding a painting that, due to its strokes, tenebrism, and execution, does not seem to belong to Rubens.

“Even when imitating Caravaggio, Rubens cannot help but be himself. The light [in the painting] is his. The candlelight is creamy and warm, like a crepe in an Antwerp kitchen. The mix of southern sensuality and northern homeliness is another trait of Rubens. The extravagance of a work that upsets so many—this blend of caravaggism and carnal abandon so typical of Rubens—is indeed a clue about its authenticity. Who could have recreated in a copy something as subtle as the moment when Rubens appropriates Caravaggio?” wrote art critic Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.

Truth, like beauty, belongs to the beholder. And Samson and Delilah, like many others, is eternally condemned to be an act of faith for its admirers and an insult to its detractors.