Getty Museum

The Good Samaritan

Date

about 1580–1590

Medium

Pen and brown ink

Culture

Dutch

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

Two men carry the limp body of a Jew attacked by robbers, while the good Samaritan, the Jew's rescuer, pays the dark figure of the innkeeper at the door. Focusing on the trio of the victim and his two attendants, the Master of the Egmont Albums gave them a bold, sculptural treatment. Despite being the subject of the story, the Good Samaritan remains less prominent, facing away from the viewer. The horse's body, with its broad haunches set at a diagonal, divides the scene into two parts, so that the strong forms on the right foreground contrast sharply with the sketchier scene on the left, in which the countryside recedes into the distance. The artist seems to have used the sheet to work out his ideas about the arrangement of the figures. He quickly outlined such areas as the inn and the figure standing in the open doorway but left them unfinished.

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