Landscape with the Good Samaritan
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 to 1669) · 1638
A storm is passing over a wild, hilly landscape. On the left, in the shadow of a great tree, a man on horseback leads a wounded traveller towards an inn; a servant walks beside them. Ahead a road winds down to a river, a coach crosses a bridge, a huntsman with a gun and a woman with a bundle go about their day, and above everything a break in the black clouds lets a shaft of light fall on a distant town. The story is the parable of the Good Samaritan, but Rembrandt has made it almost incidental: the real subject is the weather, the land and the light.
Rembrandt painted very few landscapes, fewer than ten survive, and this one, dated sixteen thirty eight, is among the finest. Look at how the paint is handled: thick, bright strokes for the lit hills and the flash on the water, thin dark glazes for the storm. The tree on the left is torn and bent as if the wind has just gone through it, and the light on the distant town is a lemon yellow that jumps out of the gloom. The landscape is imaginary, a stage for drama rather than a view of Holland, and it belongs with the artist's etched landscapes of the same years.
The painting came to Poland in the eighteenth century and was bought by the Czartoryski family, who hung it beside the Leonardo and a Raphael portrait that was stolen by the Nazis and has never been found. The Rembrandt was also taken, and was recovered after the war. Today it hangs in the European painting rooms of the Czartoryski Museum, and after the crowded Leonardo room it is a place to slow down and watch the storm roll over.
Did You Know? The Czartoryski collection once held three great paintings together, by Leonardo, Raphael and Rembrandt; the Raphael was looted in nineteen thirty nine and is still missing.
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