2-976-936 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Good Samaritan, 1537. A traveller going to Jericho from Jerusalem was robbed and left for dead by thieves. The robbers can still be seen: they appear as tiny figures, one carrying a large sword, escaping into the trees in the middle background. Several who saw the injured man passed by, first a priest and then a Levite, portrayed here on the right as an ecclesiastic dressed in black and a monk. It was a Samaritan, whose turban would identify him here as a Turk, who was the only one who stopped to tend to the wounded man. He has dismounted before a tree with a hollow trunk, and he kneels to support the battered traveller as he pours oil and wine on his wounds. Blood trickles down the traveller’s chest, and his impending death is suggested by his blueish-grey hands and feet. The figures on the right moving from the middleground to the background establish a path from the lower right to the upper left corner, where a later episode in the biblical story is shown. The Samaritan has placed the wounded man on his own horse and is taking him to an inn where he will arrange for his care.