The Massacre of the Innocents is the subject of two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the episode of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem, as related in the Gospel of Matthew. The first version painted by Rubens dates from around 1611–12. In the seventeenth-century , the painting was part of the Liechtenstein Collection in Vienna, Austria, along with another Rubens' masterpiece, Samson and Delilah. After having been miscatalogued by Vincenzio Fanti in 1767, it was attributed to one of Rubens' assistants, Jan van den Hoecke, after Rubens. There, however, it remained... until it was sold to an Austrian family in 1920. It was subsequently loaned in 1923 to Stift Reichersberg, a monastery in northern Austria. In 2001, the painting was seen by George Gordon, an expert in Flemish and Dutch paintings at Sotheby's in London. He was persuaded that it was indeed a Rubens by its similar characteristics and style to the Samson and Delilah painted around the same time. The work was sold at auction at Sotheby's, London on July 10, 2002 for £49.5 million to Canadian businessman and art collector Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet.
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