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| Discussion Board (most recent first) |
Part of what makes the Samson and Delilah so interesting as a work of art is the extreme disparity in the response it evokes from people - both those who have seen it perhaps just once, as well as scholars who may have studied it for half a lifetime.
Below you will find comments both for and against the attribution, as well as more general observations that visitors to the site have sent in. Please recommend the comments you find most interesting and let us know how you see it too.
You are viewing comments chronologically with the most recent first; you can also order them by the number of reader recommendations they have recieved.
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I believe that the National Gallery's painting is genuine. Not only is the brushwork pure Rubens, the small Oil sketch for the painting confirms his authorship. The composition became tighter with the foot going off the edge, making the foreground plane less deep and the situation more immediate. Using a rather poor engraving ( the faces are really badly drawn) and a summarily sletched tiny version of the painting as comparison points is no proof. Infra red, X-Ray, paint samples, wood age determinants, all could clear this up in a scientific manner. Neither the engraving nor the miniature Gallery painting come close to the painting's Masterful technique.
Your website was great, but to me ( and I am an artist and art history buff) your arguments did not convince.
Robert Haas, Kansas City, United States
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thanks a lot
Carpinato Caterina, Venezia, Italia
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Hi art lovers you got me convinced from your excellent (artistically & information wise) web site. Keep up the good job of revealing frauds wherever these are!!
Elsie, Athens, Greece
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Congratulations for the taste that went into the design of your site and for the erudition behind the taste.
You have proven, to my satisfaction at least, that the painting is a fake and that the National Gallery should not display it as a genuine, hand-painted oil painting by the Master himself. No doubt, it would please you if the National Gallery acknowledged the error of its ways and took down the painting forthwith. But this will not happen any time soon.
What is at stake here has nothing to do either with authenticity or provenance. We are talking about large amounts of cash paid for the painting, large commissions, the reputation of authenticators, the vanity of Trustees, and the inability of Directors to admit that they’ve been taken in. Consequently, despite your justified indignation, the painting will stay where it is. Countless visitors to the National Gallery will glance at it for five seconds and reassure themselves they’ve seen still another Rubens. Such is the habit of most visitors in all art galleries. They look without seeing. Consequently, they doesn’t care one way or the other about whatever it is they may be looking at.
The few who do pay attention to whatever they’re looking at, are creatures from a different planet. They don’t visit museums and art galleries because they’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon. They go there because they crave the company of their betters. Naturally, not wishing to lose face, they do homework before going in. They read biographies, and monographs, and dissertations, and convoluted arguments about obscure technical issues related to the items they propose to feast their eyes upon. Some of them are sufficiently perverse to know the difference between iconography and iconology. Some feel as strongly about disegno as others feel about colore. In short, the extra-terrestrial minority does not speak the same language as the average tourist, the average art historian, the average Museum Trustee, and the average Museum Director.
Tourists look at works of art because they’ve been told to. Art historians because it’s their job. Museum Trustees because they’re stock-brokers and wish to be mistaken as sensitive. Museum Directors because they want a knighthood. Extra-terrestrials look at works of art because, if they don’t, their soul will wither and die.
It seems that this site has been put together by outraged extra-terrestrials hoping to communicate with members of their tribe. Well then! Message received!
Basil Coukis, Nashua, NH, USA
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