National Gallery bought the masterpiece (pictured above) for £2.5 million in 1980.

Artificial intelligence firm Art Recognition alleges that Samson and Delilah, the renowned painting by Peter Paul Rubens on display at London’s National Gallery, is a forgery. The antecedents of the work have long been questioned by critics, and now AI technology has debunked its authenticity with an accuracy of over 91%. (ITECHPOST)

Samson and Delilah

The Rubens painting shows a scene from the Old Testament where Samson is asleep in the lap of betrayer Delilah while a conspirator nips off his hair, said to be the source of his legendary strength. Soldiers are positioned outside the room to take him once he is rendered powerless.

Critics such as artist and independent scholar Euphrosyne Doxiadis and ArtWatch UK director Michael Daley have argued that the work is only a copy of the original work that Rubens painted for his Antwerp patron Nicolaas Rockox between 1608 and 1609.

They also point out that the painting only appeared in 1929, and that it was declared an original by expert Ludwig Burchard who was later found to have issued authenticity certificaties for pecuniary gain.

However, a series of tests using AI have now raised the possibility that the critics may be right.

AI analysis

Researchers trained an AI algorithm on a data base of fake and authentic Rubens paintings to identify key attributes such as brushstrokes from the original ones.

They ran the algorithm on the National Gallery’s Samson and Delilah after dividing it into a grid and running it on each individual square.

“The results are quite astonishing,” Dr Carina Popovici, the scientist who carried out the study, told the Observer. “The algorithm has returned a 91% probability for the artwork not being authentic.”

“We repeated the experiments to be really sure that we were not making a mistake and the result was always the same,” she added. “Every patch, every single square, came out as fake, with more than 90% probability.”

Samson and Delilah: Comment from the National Gallery

According to The Guardian, the National Gallery said: “The Gallery always takes note of new research. We await its publication in full so that any evidence can be properly assessed. Until such time, it will not be possible to comment further.”

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Image of Samson and Delilah (1609-1610) Londres/London (The National Gallery) – Flickr