Jacopo Bassano
NG 277 
The Good Samaritan

Nicholas Penny, 2008

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II: Venice 1540–1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2008).

c. 1562–3

Oil on canvas, 102.1 × 79.7 cm

Support

The measurements given above are those of the stretcher. The original canvas, of a rough, open, medium‐weight weave, is paste‐lined on to two tabby‐weave canvases. The borders of the original canvas are concealed by putty and repaint extending between 1 and 2 cm from the upper edge, 2.5 cm from the lower, 2 cm from the left, and 2.5 cm from the right. Cusping is evident on all sides. The painting may have been reduced, as is claimed by Gould, but not by much.¹ The pine stretcher with crossbars dates from 1892.

Materials and Technique

There is a pinkish‐grey ground composed of lead white, with some red lead and black pigments, on which there is superimposed a secondary layer, ruddier and darker in colour, of lead white, black, vermilion and lead‐tin yellow. No evidence of gesso preparation was discovered in any of the samples that have been taken.²

The blue of the sky and the Samaritan’s breeches is azurite. This pigment is also used extensively in the landscape and, together with a copper‐green glaze, for the foliage. The stripes of the Samaritan’s scarf are also of copper green, probably verdigris. For the grass, copper green mixed with lead‐tin yellow is thickly glazed with copper green. The silver or pewter flask is painted with charcoal black, lead white and azurite. The brown of the rock formation to the right is composed of vermilion, azurite, lead‐tin yellow, black, and earth pigments. No significant pentimenti are revealed by X‐radiography.

Conservation

The painting was probably lined, cleaned and restored in the early nineteenth century. After acquisition by the Gallery in May 1856, some of the varnish in the sky was removed and the painting was recoated with mastic varnish. It was varnished again in 1865, and then relined and partially cleaned by ‘Morrill’ between 1891 and 1893.³ It was thoroughly cleaned and restored by Ruhemann in 1968. Ruhemann’s retouchings of flake losses, cracks and abrasion have slightly discoloured. In a few minor areas (notably the sheath of the Samaritan’s dagger and the fringe of his tunic) the original forms could not be detected, and these were rendered by Ruhemann with judicious imprecision.

Condition

The colours of the figures are well preserved. Shrinkage during lining has caused wrinkles, creases and cracks in the paint surface overall. The web‐like cracks are especially apparent in the sky, and there are minor losses associated with these. The darker areas are largely illegible due to abrasion and increased transparency. The mule, together with the trees and rocks behind it, can now only be clearly discerned in a strong light. The copper greens in the foliage, and perhaps also in the grass, have darkened. The stripes of the Samaritan’s scarf have also changed from green to brown. Not only has the setting been somewhat obscured by darkening but the composition has been altered by it, chiefly because the impact of the foreshortening of the mule is diminished. In addition, it is now not easy to see that the dogs in the foreground are licking up the wounded man’s blood.

Subject

The parable of the Good Samaritan is told in the Gospel of Saint Luke (10:30–7). In answer to the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ – in other words, ‘To whom am I obliged to be charitable?’ – Christ related that a ‘certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead’. A priest travelling along the same road saw him but ‘passed by on the other side’. A Levite did the same. But then a ‘certain Samaritan’ took pity on the man, ‘bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him’, leaving money for the landlord to continue caring for him. ‘Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go and do thou likewise.’

Bassano was perhaps the first Italian artist to treat this subject. He did so several times and seems to have made it popular with other Venetian artists, including Veronese.⁴ Arslan, and more recently Aikema, proposed that Bassano was following the example of Netherlandish painters whose work was known in Venice, which is plausible but not certain.⁵ A notable precedent may have been a painting by Romanino. This, however, may not be earlier than Jacopo’s first treatment of the subject.⁶

Attribution, Reputation and Date

The painting was attributed to Jacopo Bassano when it was in the Pisani collection in the mid‐eighteenth century and later when it belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds; but Waagen, when he saw it in Samuel Rogers’s collection, described it as by Francesco Bassano.⁷ He was perhaps following Buchanan’s recollections of the art trade, where it is attributed to Francesco, probably in error.⁸ In any case, Anna Jameson in her review of London’s collections referred to it as by Jacopo; it was also sold as such in Rogers’s sale and catalogued as such by the National Gallery. Waagen also attributed it to Jacopo in the supplement to his survey of English collections in 1857.⁹ Something of the painting’s reputation is conveyed by Jameson’s praise: ‘Most admirable for character as well as colour, and far more dignified in feeling than is usual with Bassano.’¹⁰ Eastlake placed it on the list of paintings in Samuel Rogers’s collection that he most desired for the Gallery, and it was the second most expensive of these – [page 17][page 18]Rubens’s A Roman Triumph after Mantegna (NG 278) cost more. The attribution to Jacopo was not, it seems, challenged in the twentieth century.

The type of the Samaritan is exceptionally close to the Saint Jerome in the altarpiece of the Crucifixion with Saints now in the Museo Civico, Treviso, which is documented as commissioned in the winter of 1561 and set up in the winter of 1562. Rearick justly observes that the scintillating brushwork on the Samaritan’s clothes can be exactly paralleled in those of the Magdalen embracing the cross in that work.¹¹ Ballarin, on the other hand, proposed a date of about 1557.¹²

Versions and Variations

The earliest treatment of this subject by Jacopo Bassano seems to be a painting in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court (fig. 1), which is likely to date from about 1546–8.¹³ It is of a horizontal format, the mule faces the viewer, and the rocky bank and trees occupy the left side of the painting rather than the right. The action is also different. The Samaritan binds the traveller’s leg, whereas in NG 277 he has already bound his wounds (those on his head as well as his leg) and now lifts him up in order to place him on the mule. The same metal flask features in both paintings, and the bald, bearded model employed for the wounded traveller seems to have been used instead for the Samaritan in NG 277 – or at least studies of the same model were used for both. About a decade later the workshop painted replicas, with minor variations, of this first version, and there is one in the Capitoline collection that is smaller in size but vertical in format and on panel, which must be by Jacopo’s own hand.¹⁴

NG 277 appears to be the first version of the new composition, although, if this is indeed the case, the absence of significant pentimenti is surprising. An unfinished sketch of the composition in Prague should perhaps be considered as preliminary. Neumann proposed that it was an ‘abbozzo’ kept in the studio as a ‘guide for the preparation of similar pictures’.¹⁵ Rearick has instead argued that it was a copy commenced by Jacopo’s most talented son, Francesco, which he abandoned, dissatisfied.¹⁶ Several replicas of varying quality were made by the workshop.¹⁷

Drawing

There is a preparatory drawing in black chalk on discoloured blue paper in the Witt collection in the Courtauld Institute (fig. 2),¹⁸ and another, for the traveller, in ruddy brown and pink chalks, as well as black and white chalks, on a somewhat green‐blue paper in a private collection in Chicago (fig. 3).¹⁹

Print

The painting, or, as Gould carefully notes, perhaps a ‘hypothetical identical replica’, was reproduced as an engraving with some etching by Pietro Monaco (1707–1772) in the Raccolta di Centododici Stampe di Pitture della Storia Sacra published by Guglielmo Zerletti in 1763.²⁰ The print, which is of high quality, was signed by the artist, with the assertion [page 20]that it was drawn, engraved and printed by him (‘del. scol. e forma’) in Venice. The legend describes the print as the ‘Parabola del Samaritano’, made after a painting by Jacopo Bassano in the possession of the noble Pisani family.²¹ The print differs from NG 277 only in minor respects: there is a little more space at the left, and the Levite’s book is less evident. In the painting the vessel on its side behind the flask appears to be a bowl, or perhaps another flask on its side, but in the print it is interpreted as another, larger, flask. The most important difference is that in the print the traveller’s cloak extends beneath the two dogs.

Provenance

The print (see previous section) after what is likely to be this painting published in 1763 describes it as belonging to the Pisani family, of which there are several branches (see p. 365). It was probably still in the same collection in 1772 when the print was reissued. From the Pisani the painting seems to have passed briefly to Count Vitturi. Thomas Moore Slade claimed that it was among the pictures he acquired in about 1775 from that Venetian collection (see p. 448).²² Slade sold the painting to Sir Joshua Reynolds not long before the spring of 1791, when Reynolds included it in the exhibition intended to benefit his servant (‘Ralph’s exhibition’) as no. 52 ‘Bassan – The Good Samaritan’. It was included in Reynolds’s sale at Christie’s on 17 March 1795 as lot 48 but was bought in at 44 guineas (£46 4s.).²³ Reynolds was said to have valued it at 100 guineas, but Lady Inchiquin (the artist’s niece and heir, later Marchioness of Thomond) valued it at 40 guineas.²⁴ A year later it was among the group of pictures offered to Joseph Berwick, a woollen draper and banker forming a collection with Farington’s advice, at 50 guineas,²⁵ but when offered at Phillips on 9 May 1798 (as lot 36) it was bought in at 23½ guineas (£24 13s. 6d.).²⁶ The painting was finally sold as lot 54 on the first day of the Thomond sale (18 May 1821), where it was bought by Henry Rogers for 40 guineas.²⁷ It is presumed to have been bequeathed by him to his brother Samuel Rogers, at whose sale on 3 May 1856 (the sixth day of the sale) it was lot 709, and was acquired for the National Gallery at 230 guineas (£241 10s.).

Exhibitions

London 1823, British Institution (142; lent by Henry Rogers); Trent 2006, Romanino (47).

Framing

In the mid‐1970s the painting was given a ‘rose corner’ frame. This pattern, popular in mid‐seventeenth‐century France, has flowers carved in relief at the corners: in this case they were also at the centres and were superimposed on [page 21]panels engraved in the gesso. If this was an old frame it had been stripped and regilded, but it is more likely to have been a modern imitation.

In the summer of 1998 it was replaced by a seventeenth‐century Italian frame, probably Emilian (fig. 4), which had been acquired from Messrs Wiggins in the autumn of the previous year with money generously donated for this purpose by Dr and Mrs Alan Horan. The carved elements are of walnut, the carcass of poplar. The reverse ogee profile is carved with acanthus leaves and tongues which, unusually, point towards the painting. Smaller vegetal forms at the outer edge have rounded (petal) and pointed (leaf) projections, some of them broken, which make the frame vulnerable to handling. The frame was very slightly reduced at the mitred corners to fit the painting and numerous leaf tips were restored. The pale water‐gilding is original. This is one of the finest frames in the National Gallery, distinguished in both execution and design, and in excellent condition.

Notes