# The Massacre of the Innocents > Peter Paul Rubens - c. 1611-1612 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/peter-paul-rubens/rubens-the-massacre-of-the-innocents/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-04 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Peter Paul Rubens - **Date:** c. 1611-1612 - **Medium:** Oil on oak panel - **Dimensions:** 142 x 183 x 1.9 cm. Weight 93.9 kg. - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Flemish Baroque, seventeenth century - **Current location:** Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. The Thomson Collection. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary An oak panel of about 1611, bought around 1700 by the Prince of Liechtenstein together with the Samson and Delilah now in the National Gallery in London, catalogued in 1767 under a name almost nobody recognises and by 1780 as the work of a Rubens assistant, sold out of the princely collection in 1920 to an Austrian family, and lent from 1923 to a monastery in upper Austria by an owner who disliked it. In 2001 George Gordon of Sotheby's saw it and gave it back to Rubens. On 10 July 2002 it made 45 million pounds at the hammer, 49.5 million with fees, then the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art in the United Kingdom and for any Old Master anywhere.This is the best documented case there is of an auction house creating value by changing an attribution, and it inverts the usual sleeper story. Here the house that stood to earn the commission made the reattribution before the sale, so the gain went to the elderly consignor rather than to a dealer who had spotted something in a saleroom. The finder took no risk and captured no margin; the seller captured all of it.The pair matters as much as the picture. Both Rubens paintings bought from the Forchondt brothers around 1700 were reduced in the same Liechtenstein inventories to the same assistant, Jan van den Hoecke. One was recovered in 1929 by Ludwig Burchard; this one waited another seventy-two years. And the attribution of the picture that authenticated this one has been under sustained attack for four decades. This record leaves both positions standing. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1611** Painted in Antwerp; first owner unrecorded `[unknown]` (origin) Painted within a few years of Rubens's return from Italy in 1608. No commission document, patron or original location is known, and nothing is documented for the eighty or ninety years before the Forchondt sale. - **c. 1700-1920** The Princes of Liechtenstein, Vienna `[documented]` (purchase) Sold to Johann Adam Andreas I, Prince of Liechtenstein, by the Forchondt brothers of Antwerp, together with the Samson and Delilah now in the National Gallery, London. Both received the Liechtenstein family seal. Drawings of 1815 show the two hanging side by side in the Garden Palace in Vienna. Catalogued by Vincenzio Fanti in 1767 as Franciscus de Neve II, and in an anonymous inventory of 1780 as Jan van den Hoecke, after Rubens. The Samson was reduced to the same assistant in the same period. - **1920-2002** An Austrian family `[documented]` (purchase) Sold out of the Liechtenstein collection in 1920. Lent in 1923 to Stift Reichersberg, an Augustinian monastery in upper Austria, where it remained for close to eighty years. The consignor in 2002 was an eighty-nine-year-old woman who had inherited the picture and disliked it, which is the stated reason for the loan. - **2002-2008** Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought at Sotheby's, London, 10 July 2002, at a hammer of 45 million pounds, 49.5 million with fees. Bid in the room by the Mayfair dealer Sam Fogg acting for Thomson. Lent afterwards to the National Gallery, London, where it hung near the Samson and Delilah on which its attribution rests. Thomson died in 2006. - **2008-present** Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. The Thomson Collection. `[documented]` (gift) Transferred to the AGO in 2008 as the museum reopened after its rebuilding. Accession 2014/1581. Lent to the Rubenshuis in Antwerp in 2018 and 2019, its first return to the city where it was painted, and shown at the AGO in Early Rubens from October 2019, an exhibition organised with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **2002-07-10** Sotheby's, Old Master Paintings, Part One, London, Sotheby's sale number L02111, per the house's own ecatalogue page header ('Old Master Paintings, Part One / Lot 6'). The record previously carried only 'Old Master Paintings, London'., lot 6, per the house's own lot page. - Estimate: UNCHANGED. Reported at the time as at least 10 million dollars; no sterling estimate located. The 2002 ecatalogue lot page carries no estimate block, so the house did not confirm or contradict this today. - Hammer: GBP 45,000,000. UNCHANGED, and still NOT published by the house. Sotheby's publishes no hammer for this lot anywhere read today; the figure remains on the Antiques Trade Gazette, which reported it as the hammer on the day and in its headline. - With premium: GBP 49,500,000 total, of which the fee is about GBP 4,500,000. UNCHANGED NUMERICALLY, UPGRADED EVIDENTIALLY. Sotheby's own corporate history page now supplies the total in the house's own words: 'Rubens' The Massacre of the Innocents achieved GBP 49.5 million in 2002, which remains a record for an Old Master painting.' Premium-inclusive on the house's own convention. The GBP 4,500,000 fee component remains DERIVED from the premium schedule described in the record's own note and is NOT house-published. - Sotheby's surviving ecatalogue lot page confirms artist, title, sale name and lot number, but its description block is empty, and stays empty in a rendered browser, with the page reporting only 'BIDDING IS CLOSED' - the 2002 archive is thin rather than blocked, unlike the complete 2007 and 2011 ecatalogue pages read the same day. The ecatalogue sale index page for L02111 returns HTTP 404 while the lot page lives, so the sale date of 10 July 2002 could not be re-confirmed from the house and stays on its existing sources. Sotheby's results and sale totals sit behind a login at every year, which was not crossed. A figure this record carried on trade-press authority is now also published by the seller, and the record's separation of the GBP 45 million hammer from the GBP 49.5 million total is borne out: the house prints only the total. ## Open questions - For whom was it painted, and where did it hang between about 1611 and about 1700? No patron, commission or early location is documented; the chain begins with the Forchondt brothers selling it to Liechtenstein. - Has the oak panel ever been dendrochronologically dated? No report has been published, although the support makes it possible and it would independently test the dating of about 1611 to 1612. The companion picture in London has been dated this way. - Why did Vincenzio Fanti give it to Franciscus de Neve the younger in 1767, and on what basis was that changed to Jan van den Hoecke by 1780? Neither the reasoning nor the identity of the 1780 compiler is known. - What did the picture make when the Liechtenstein collection sold it in 1920, and who bought it? The purchaser is described in the sources only as an Austrian family. - Was any technical examination carried out before the 2002 sale? The published account of the reattribution is comparative and no technical dossier has been released. - Was an export licence application triggered by the 2002 sale? The picture left the United Kingdom for Canada after a period on loan to the National Gallery; the licence position has not been reported in the sources consulted. - What is the exact premium-inclusive total? The sources consulted report 49.5 million pounds and no more precise figure has been located in a printed Sotheby's result. - What is the lot number and the sterling pre-sale estimate? Only a dollar estimate of at least 10 million has been found. ## Sources - [1] Antiques Trade Gazette, 'Rubens masterpiece joins the world record holders at 45m', reporting the sale of 10 July 2002. Gives the hammer of GBP 45m, the buyer in the room as Sam Fogg, the description of the object as a superbly preserved panel painting, and George Gordon as the discoverer. Paywalled after the opening paragraph; read to that point in the browser. - [2] HENI, 'The Painting That Set Rubens' Auction Record After Years in the Shadows'. Gives the 69.69 million dollar figure, the previous Rubens record of 7.5 million dollars set by Portrait of a Man as Mars in January 2000, the van den Hoecke attribution, and the eighty-nine-year-old Austrian consignor who disliked the picture and lent it to a monastery. - [3] Art Gallery of Ontario, 'The Massacre's triumphant return', 30 November 2018. The museum's own caption gives oil on panel, 142 x 183 x 1.9 cm, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the article records the loan to the Rubenshuis and the Early Rubens exhibition of October 2019. - [4] Sotheby's, biography of George Gordon, Deputy Chairman, Sotheby's Europe and Co-Chairman Old Masters Worldwide. Gives his arrival at Sotheby's in 1980, his move to Old Master Paintings in 1990, the nearly 250 years of obscurity, the 49.5 million pound price, and the claim that it remains the highest price paid anywhere for a rediscovered painting. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens)', consolidating the Forchondt sale to Liechtenstein, the Fanti catalogue of 1767, the anonymous inventory of 1780, the 1920 sale and 1923 loan to Stift Reichersberg, the accession number 2014/1581, the Munich version and the 2022 Letzte Generation action. TERTIARY: flagged for replacement with the Sotheby's 2002 catalogue entry and the AGO Thomson Collection catalogue. NOTE: its infobox gives oil on canvas, which is contradicted by the AGO and by its own thickness and weight figures, and is corrected in this record. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Samson and Delilah (Rubens)', for the Rockox commission and chimneypiece, the 1640 charity sale, the 1700 Liechtenstein purchase and the eighteenth-century attribution to Jan van den Hoecke, the 1880 Paris sale, Burchard's 1929 recognition, the 1980 Christie's purchase, Doxiadis's grounds, the Francken evidence, the 1983 National Gallery cleaning and pigment analysis, the dendrochronology and the Art Recognition result of September 2021. TERTIARY: flagged for replacement with the National Gallery Technical Bulletin vol. 7 (1983), the Burlington Magazine provenance article of 2004 and Doxiadis's own publications. - [7] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Brussels workshop version, carrying the museum reference, the dimensions and the 1902 acquisition from Edmond Huybrechts of Antwerp as an Antoon Sallaert. - [8] Wikimedia Commons file page for the lead plate, recording the Art Gallery of Ontario's own image viewer as the source of the reproduction and the 2018-19 Rubenshuis loan. - [9] Journal of the History of Collections, 'The ambassador and the artist: Sir Dudley Carleton's relationship with Peter Paul Rubens: connoisseurship and art collecting at the court of the early Stuarts', on the 1617-1618 exchange of pictures for antique statues. Abstract read; the full text is behind a subscription and the 1618 letter itself has not been read in the original here. - [10] Iconotheca, 'What a Sleeper Is, and Why They Still Happen', the market article this record extends, for the distributional argument and the Thwaytes v Sotheby's holding. - [11] sothebys.com, web page cited for the Sotheby's sale of 2002-07-10. - [12] sothebys.com, web page cited for the Sotheby's sale of 2002-07-10. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.