The Artist: For a biography of Domenico Fetti, see the Catalogue Entry for
The Parable of the Mote and the Beam (
1991.153).
The Painting: Derived from a series first commissioned by Duke Ferdinando I Gonzaga (1587–1626), this painting represents one of the most famous parables found in the Bible, that of the Good Samaritan relayed in the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37. A lone traveler was robbed, beaten, and left for dead along the road to Jericho. After a Jewish priest and then a Levite ignored the suffering man, a Samaritan came upon him and showed him mercy: “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.”
As with Fetti’s other parables, Northern compositions influenced the interpretation. A print after Henrich Aldegrever (ca. 1502–1555/1561) (The Met
17.3.1381) contains many of the key aspects of Fetti’s figural group including the Samaritan’s powerful, striding legs, the beaten figure’s head turned toward the viewer, and the fall of his legs across the donkey. A key innovation of Fetti’s was to reduce the Samaritan’s features to an elegant turban (eliminating his face altogether) while focusing attention on the limp victim’s expression, his exhausted eyes elegantly engaging the viewer.
Around 1619, Fetti began a series of twelve compositions illustrating the parables of Christ and two related subjects of proverbs for the Mantuan court (for more details, see 1991.153).[1] Fetti and his studio produced many copies of these celebrated images, and the composition of
The Good Samaritan proved especially popular, sparking the greatest number of compositional variants and copies.[2] The Met’s painting is unlikely to be the prime version and was likely produced in his workshop but not by his hand. The prime version is generally accepted to be a horizontal format panel, formerly in the imperial collections of Prague and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, executed in sparkling colors with an inclusion of ruins in the middle distance (see fig. 1 above).[3] If this is, indeed, Fetti’s earliest articulation of the theme, then his composition is even more strongly linked with Aldegrever’s print, with its horizontal format and architectural landscape. The difference in format begs the question of whether Fetti’s decorative series may have developed in tandem with independent easel paintings of his parable subjects from its inception. A second painting, which has sometimes been considered the prime version and utilizes an identical, central figural group in the vertical format of the Gonzaga series, is today in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice (fig. 2). It is this basic format that is found in The Met’s composition and in a more finely finished panel in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. While some scholars have taken this difference of technique to indicate that The Met’s painting comes from a later stage in Fetti’s development, Sadfarik considers it to be evidence of another hand, probably someone in Fetti’s workshop.[4] At least ten additional variants and copies are documented between public collections and the art market.[5]
The composition of Fetti’s
The Good Samaritan had a lasting appeal among artists and connoisseurs through the end of the nineteenth century. A close copy of The Met’s painting descended from the collection of the theorist of the picturesque, Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824).[6] A somewhat simplified, red chalk drawing of the vertical composition passed through a series of great collectors—including Jonathon Richardson Senior (1667–1745) and Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765)—though it is anomalous as a preparatory work on paper for Fetti’s series.[7] Artists’ continued interest in treating the formal and emotional power of interlocked figures in a landscape can be traced through Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)’s copy of Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)’s related composition (fig. 3).
David Pullins 2020
[1] Askew 1961.
[2] Askew 1961, p. 37.
[3] Among the replicas of this painting is a horizontal format version, thought to be autograph, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[4] The shifting degrees of certainty with which The Met painting has been given to Fetti—from full confidence in the early twentieth century to later hesitation, notably by Safarik 1990, pp. 102, 105—can be traced in the References section of this entry.
[5] At least twelve versions and copies have survived. Beyond those in the body text here, are included the Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego; Daylesford House, Adlestrop, Gloucestershire (formerly in the collection of Mrs. O. Rooke, Suffolk; sold, Christie’s, June 29, 1979; 1979); Thomas Agnew & Sons, London (formerly in the collection of M. Thomas Bodkin; sold, Sotheby’s, November 11, 1959); formerly Major W. P. Kincaid Lennox, Downton Castle, Herefordshire (sold, Christie's, London, April 28, 2016, no. 82); private collection, Vienna (sold by Dorotheum, September 17–20, 1964); collection of Mr. Philip Hofer, Boston; Museo dell’Alto Adige, Bolzano; and in the Suardi Collection, Bergamo. See Askew 1961, pp. 37–38; Safarik 1990.
[6] Christie’s, South Kensington, April 28, 2016, no. 82
[7] Safarik 1990, p. 103.
