AI declares National Gallery’s Samson and Delilah almost certainly a fake
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A painting previously attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Samson and Delilah</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, has long been suspected of not actually being an authentic work by the Baroque artist, and <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/national-gallery-london-rubens-samson-and-delilah-ai-authentication-1234604957/" target="_blank">new research</a> has provided more proof for the claim.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The work, which currently hangs in London’s National Gallery, was recently authenticated using artificial intelligence (AI) by Swiss-based tech company Art Recognition.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The company concluded that the painting has a 91 percent probability of being fake, according to a report in the </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guardian</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though Rubens did paint a scene of </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Samson and Delilah</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, depicting the moment when Delilah cut Samson’s hair, it disappeared after his death in 1640.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The suspicious painting re-emerged in 1929, when it was attributed to Rubens by Ludwig Bruchard, an expert on the artist.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, following Bruchard’s death it was revealed that he provided certificates of authenticity for money, with 60 works authenticated by him since being identified as fakes.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Since the London gallery purchased the work for a then-record of £2.5 million in 1980, several critics have questioned its authenticity.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Euphrosyne Doxiadis is one of said sceptics, who has claimed in several papers that the National Gallery’s painting differed from studies that Ruben made for the work.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The most recent findings using AI technology adds further doubt to the painting’s authenticity.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Art Recognition used a database of fake and authentic Ruben paintings to teach an AI bot to identify minute details found in authentic Rubens works.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then, the bot analysed the National Gallery’s </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Samson and Delilah</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by dividing the canvas into a grid and examining it square by square.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We repeated the experiments to be really sure that we were not making a mistake and the result was always the same,” Carina Popovici, the leading scientist behind the analysis, told the </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guardian</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Every patch, every single square, came out as fake, with more than 90 percent probability.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, it is unclear whether the bot takes into account varieties in style that might result from the help of studio assistants.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: National Gallery of London</span></em></p>
