Poetic Features of the Parable

History of Interpretation

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Making a text into visual images forces the artist to make certain choices not specified by the words. Artists frequently add additional elements that reflect what the biblical story meant for them. When we look at pictures of the Good Samaritan, we can see how the interpretation of that story has changed over the centuries.

Various characters of the story are emphasized and symbolized at different times. Sometimes, Christ is directly compared to the Samaritan or to the victim.

Artists’ portrayals often reflect how church leaders understood this parable. By their very nature as visual objects, images of the Good Samaritan provide unique windows into the meaning of the parable.

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If you ask how many kings visit the infant Jesus in the New Testament, most people will answer three. However, if you actually read the account of the visit of the wise men in the Gospel of Matthew, you will find that no number is specified. The story's depiction in art is one reason why people assume a particular number. One can write the words "wise men" and let the number be unspecified. It is much more difficult to draw an indeterminate number of people. Making a text into visual images requires that certain choices be made by the artist that are not specified by the words.

The parable of the Good Samaritan was first illustrated in the period after Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Good Samaritan is represented in two scenes of the Rossano Gospel, an illustrated version of the Bible. Here, the artist made the wounded traveler almost invisible. The emphasis is on the Samaritan who is represented as Christ, with halo and golden robe.

The next example is from the Romanesque period in western Europe. Here, the Good Samaritan is found in several scenes on wall paintings. They show the attacked victim, the passing priest and Levite, and the behavior of the Good Samaritan. These scenes emphasize the suffering victim. In the scene where the traveler is attacked, he is shown with a naked torso and bloody wounds, and he turns his face, almost pleadingly, towards the viewer.

During the Gothic period, stained glass was often decorated with narrative images. The Good Samaritan was one of the images shown in the windows at the French Cathedrals of Chartres, Sens, and Bourges. Here, as in the Rossano Gospels, Christ is seen as the Samaritan. In the Gothic stained glass, however, the relationship is suggested by physically surrounding the image of the rescued traveler with images of Christ’s salvation of humanity.

During the Renaissance, a painting by the Venetian painter Jacopo Bassano shows the Samaritan lifting the body of the traveler. The face of the victim turns away from the viewer. The image focuses on his naked torso, which is displayed across the central portion of the canvas. Here, the victim is equated with the body of Christ. The artist also conveys the heroic tradition of the body expressing human nobility, a major theme of Renaissance art.

The visual image is as much a part of its total meaning for the people who see it as are the specific narrative components. Visual images of the Good Samaritan have provided unique windows into the meaning of the parable over the centuries.

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If you ask how many kings visit the infant Jesus in the New Testament, most people will answer three. However, if you actually read the account of the visit of the wise men in the Gospel of Matthew, you will find that no number is specified, although three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—are mentioned. While there are many reasons for the extra-textual belief in three kings, one of the main explanations is the visual images of the nativity that people have seen. While one can write the words "wise men" and let the number be unspecified, it is much more difficult to depict visually an indeterminate number of people. Making a text into visual images requires that certain choices not specified by the words be made by the artist or patron. In making such choices, artists frequently show additional elements that reflect what the biblical story meant for them and to others who would view the images. In looking at pictures of the Good Samaritan from the earliest Christian art to the present day, we can see how the interpretation of that story changed in ways that are not necessarily apparent from a study of the text and textual commentary.

The earliest Christian art dates from the second and third centuries, a period when Christianity was an illegal religion in the Roman Empire. Images of the Good Samaritan, however, did not appear in the catacombs or in other examples of the earliest Christian imagery. This very early Christian art tended to concentrate on themes such as Jonah and the Whale or the Good Shepherd, both of which focused on the miraculous salvation of God. Although some of Christ’s miracles such as the Healing of the Paralytic or the Loaves and the Fishes received visual treatment, none of the parables found visual form, perhaps because their didactic approach lacks a direct emphasis on the viewer’s salvation.

The parable of the Good Samaritan was first illustrated in the period after Christianity had become not only a legal religion but the official religion of the then collapsing Roman Empire. The sixth-century Rossano Gospels are a good example of how the Good Samaritan story was viewed during this period. The Rossano Gospels are a fragmentary Illustrated Gospel text, which was made not simply as a religious text, but as a luxury product. The codex contains a Greek text written with silver ink on purple-dyed vellum. These factors alone suggest that it was no ordinary book but a sumptuous product, associated perhaps with the patronage of the imperial house. Before the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, readings for the Lenten season are excerpted and arranged in the liturgical order in which they were read. These Lenten readings are illustrated with scenes from Christ’s parables and passion. On one of the folios (7 verso) a strip narrative of the Good Samaritan appears at the top of the page. On the lower part of the page, four prophets (David, Micah, David in a second appearance, and Sirach) are represented, and beneath them are quotations from the Old Testament that are relevant to the New Testament event that is depicted on the top of the page. The Good Samaritan is represented in two scenes. The first shows the Samaritan finding the wounded traveler, and the second shows the Samaritan, with the wounded traveler on his donkey, paying the innkeeper. One of the most interesting things about the Rossano Gospel image is that the wounded traveler is almost invisible, and the emphasis is on the Samaritan who is represented as Christ, with halo and golden robe. As Kurt Weitzmann has pointed out, the Christ-Good Samaritan is assisted in taking care of the traveler by an angel with veiled hands. It is possible that the source of this angel is an image of Christ’s Baptism, where a similar angel frequently holds Christ’s garments. The way Christ is depicted and the presence of the angel visually relate the Good Samaritan to other sacred appearances of Christ in the New Testament. What the illuminator of the Rossano Gospels has represented in the image is not his or her own invention, but a visual form to the commentaries on this parable by Origen and other early Church fathers, which also say that the Good Samaritan is Christ. The Good Samaritan is frequently represented in manuscripts of the Eastern Church such as Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, MS gr. 74, but the emphasis is on the activities of the robbers, and the identification of the Samaritan with Christ is not stressed.

The Romanesque period in western Europe, a time when feudalism dominated as an economic system, saw a group of new visions of the Good Samaritan. Many of the works showing the Good Samaritan were made at that time for monastic contexts, since monasteries were the church institution that had the most power and influence during this time. The Romanesque Church of Sant’Angelo in Formis belonged to the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino, St. Benedict’s own church and the cradle of Western monasticism. In about 1085 Sant’Angelo in Formis was decorated with wall paintings of scenes from the Old and New Testaments that were paid for by Desiderius, the Abbot of Montecassino. Here the Good Samaritan is found in several scenes that show the attacked victim, the passing priest and Levite, and the behavior of the Good Samaritan. These scenes differ fundamentally from the Rossano Gospel in their emphasis on the suffering victim. In the scene where the traveler is attacked, he is shown with a naked torso and bloody wounds, and he turns his face, almost pleadingly, towards the viewer.

The Good Samaritan also appears in a sculpted capital in the Moissac cloister. Here the image could be studied by the monks as they moved about their daily activities. Another appearance of imagery of the Good Samaritan made for a monastic context is in the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad von Landesberg, made after 1170. This manuscript was a teaching tool that the Benedictine Abbess made for her nuns. In her introduction to the manuscript Herrad wrote, "This book titled Garden of Delights, I myself, the little bee composed inspired by God, from the sap of diverse flowers from Holy Scripture and from philosophical works, and I constructed it by my love for you, in the same manner as a honeycomb full of honey for the honor and the glory of Jesus Christ and the Church." It is possible that the volume was never bound but always left loose in folios to facilitate instruction of the nuns. One of the flowers culled by Herrad is Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan. It is shown in three images. First, the traveler sets out from a city, and he is then attacked in a forest by four robbers. The attack is represented savagely with one robber striking the traveler with a club while another pulls the socks from his feet. The second image shows the priest and Levite riding by the victim. Although the two men appear to ride in the same landscape, the repeated body of the traveler is a standard visual device to suggest the passage of time. The last image shows the Samaritan putting the bandaged traveler on his horse and physically handing both the traveler and money to the innkeeper. It is interesting that Herrad’s commentary on this parable seems to be an early version of blaming the victim. She says, "This traveler is not only an individual, he is also man, the human race, foolishly departing from his country at birth, and, except for the shelter afforded him by God finding only enemies eagerly seeking his ruin, or friends who are both powerless and insensitive." It is possible that the emphasis on savagery in the imagery is in direct response to this idea expressed in the text.

During the Gothic period, a new religious institution gained prominence. This was the bishop’s church or cathedral, which was located within the city, where a new economy based on trade and cash money was also rising. The French Gothic Cathedral included a new kind of architecture that reached out to the surrounding city with towers and flying buttresses and had light flow into the architecture through stained glass windows. In addition to letting light flow into the church, the stained glass was also decorated with narrative images. The Good Samaritan was one of the images shown in the windows at the French Cathedrals of Chartres, Sens, and Bourges. In these windows the Good Samaritan was paired with the Fall of Humanity. This approach (called exegesis), where the Old Testament is seen as an allegorical precursor of the New Testament rather than as a text in its own right, was particularly widespread during the Gothic period. At Sens, for example, the three episodes of the Good Samaritan—the robbery, the passing of the priest and the Levite, and the rescue of the traveler by the Samaritan—are placed in three lozenge-shaped medallions that appear from the top to the bottom in the window. Each of these lozenges is surrounded by roundels that amplify its meaning. Surrounding the robbery is the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve, explaining visually that the traveler symbolized humanity that was lost by Adam and Eve. Next to the image of the priest and the Levite are images of Moses and Aaron, symbolizing the Old Law. The presence of an image of the Golden Calf and the behavior of the priest and the Levite in the central lozenge imply that the Old Law is inadequate. The lowest lozenge, which shows the rescue of the traveler by the Samaritan, is surrounded by roundels of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. Here, as in the Rossano Gospels, Christ is seen as the Samaritan. In the Gothic stained glass, however, the relationship is suggested by physically surrounding the image of the rescued traveler with images of Christ’s salvation of humanity rather than depicting the Samaritan with the features and clothing of Christ. The images in the window are fairly small and might be perceived by the viewer at first simply as fields of colored light. But as he or she looked at them more closely, the central story in the vertically arranged lozenges might become evident. And as the viewer continued to look, the exegetical, theological supports to each part of the story would gradually become clearer.

During the Renaissance there was a new interest in classical culture. The art forms tried to replicate the visual world in new ways instead of giving meaning through the relationship of complex symbolic codes such as the Gothic stained glass windows. One point perspective is invented and the naked human body, especially the heroic naked male torso, becomes a special carrier of meaning in art. While the parables in general are not widely illustrated during the Renaissance, there are several images of the Good Samaritan especially in northern Italy. A painting by the Venetian painter Jacopo Bassano (ca. 1560) shows the Samaritan lifting the body of the traveler. The face of the victim turns away from the viewer, and the image focuses on his naked torso, which is displayed across the central portion of the canvas. This appearance of the victim’s body equates it with the body of Christ and also with the heroic tradition of the body expressing human nobility, which was so important during the Renaissance. As a foil for the flesh of the body, the clothes of the Samaritan are rendered in bravura brush work, and a limpid blue landscape appears in the background.

The sixteenth century saw European Christianity divided into two parts, Roman Catholic and Protestant, and by the latter part of the century this division had affected the art produced in Europe. Images of the Good Samaritan, however, had meaning for both groups. The Catholic church launched its own reform program or Counter Reformation in the sixteenth century. This movement emphasized the importance of religious art in aiding the spiritual life of the faithful. The purpose of religious art was to instruct the faithful and suggest the emotional element necessary in the devotion of the church. Such factors are emphasized in Catholic images of the Good Samaritan. Domenico Fetti’s Good Samaritan shows "The wounded traveler allegorically foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ just as inversely the Samaritan’s resuscitation of the Traveler through the binding of his wounds refers to the power of Christ’s love to revive a sinner." Here the mood of the relationship between the Samaritan and the traveler is also expressed in the rendering of the landscape, something already seen in Bassano’s image of the subject. This is a foreshadowing of many later appearances of the Good Samaritan, where the story seems to exist mainly as an excuse for a landscape image. In Giovan Vincenzo Forli’s altarpiece of the Good Samaritan in the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, the wounded body of the Samaritan, which is accompanied by his rescuers, provides a visual focus in the lower part of the image, but the upper half of the canvas is dominated by an appearance of the Madonna and Infant Christ surrounded by an Angelic host of twisting, reaching angels, which appear to comfort the sufferer. The visual presence of such supernatural aid demonstrated the Catholic church’s continued devotion to the Virgin Mary and also its belief that spectacle and drama in art would help the viewer experience religious devotion.

Protestant churches in northern Europe were much more dubious about the use of art in religion. Devotional images, especially of saints or the Madonna, were not tolerated. Images that emphasized the teachings of Christ were usually accepted as a visual corollary of the literal interpretation of the Bible favored by most Protestant theologians, although such images were usually bought by private patrons rather than by churches. The parables, recognized as teaching tools of Jesus, were thought to be particularly suitable for Protestant artists, and the visual form of the northern European Good Samaritan images reflects their societal function. They do not suggest either the supernatural heavenly host of Forli or the parallels with the body of Christ suggested in the Bassano. These works do not try to subsume the viewer into a religious emotional drama. The human narrative is emphasized instead, and the peaceful appearance of Good Works is suggested. Rembrandt van Rijn worked on compositions of the Good Samaritan in a series of pen and ink sketches that resulted in an etching. A painted version of the subject by the Rembrandt school shows the traveler deposited at the inn. The Samaritan, whose back is towards the viewer, pays the innkeeper in the midground, while in the foreground others lift the traveler down from a white horse. On one side of the painting a woman draws water from a well, and on the other side a man, presumably a guest at the inn, looks out the window at the goings-on in the inn courtyard. The image is suffused with the golden lighting that characterizes the Rembrandt school, and it seems to suggest normal human activities on a peaceful afternoon.

During the nineteenth century the Good Samaritan was a popular theme in Germany and also with folk artists both in Europe and in the United States. The story seemed at this time to embody democratic ideals that appealed to new nationalists. The image continued to appear sometimes in the work of major artists. The French romantic painter Eugene Delacroix painted two versions of the Good Samaritan in 1850 and 1852. Both were lithographed and the subject of some extant preparatory drawings. While Delacroix painted several biblical subjects in addition to the Good Samaritan, many of his best known paintings deal with subjects of political freedom, such as "Liberty Leading the People" or "The Massacre at Chios," which shows an episode from the Greek war for independence. Both of Delacroix’s versions of the Good Samaritan were shown in the French Salons, public juried art shows that were the standard vehicle for exhibiting art in nineteenth-century Paris. Works shown in the Salons were written up in the newspapers and some were bought by the government. Surprisingly some of the works at the Salons were bought by the government to donate to French churches that had been deprived of funds in the Revolution of 1789. The knowledge of this possibility seemed to assure a supply of biblical subjects at the Salons. The selection of the particular subject of the Good Samaritan seems to represent Delacroix’s personal religious outlook that centered on Christianity’s potential for developing compassion and humanity. In his 1850 version, he shows the Samaritan straining to lift the wounded traveler onto his horse. The Samaritan is bent with his exertions, and the body of the traveler is bunched up in an awkward pose as he is boosted onto the saddle. Although the palette is quite dark except for the red mantle of the Samaritan, the brush work is active and vigorous. The compassion of the Samaritan and the vitality of the brush work are exactly what were noted by the contemporary critics Thierry and Gautier, who wrote about Delacroix’s Good Samaritan for the Paris press.

In the later nineteenth century Vincent Van Gogh made a series of copies of Delacroix’s religious works, including the Good Samaritan. Van Gogh was himself a deeply religious man, and this may have affected which Delacroix works he chose to copy. In Van Gogh’s painting, the dark palette of the 1850 Delacroix painting has been replaced by one of light and acrid hues, especially in the background. The active brush strokes of Delacroix’s original have been magnified and exaggerated by Van Gogh so that the vibrant surface of the image has perhaps supplanted the narrative of the Good Samaritan as the subject of the painting.

While religious imagery continues to be made during the twentieth century, the Good Samaritan has not a been a particularly popular subject for art works in western Europe or the United States. The Good Samaritan does appear occasionally in the work of twentieth-century Asian artists. Kim Ki Chang shows the Good Samaritan in a watercolor on silk. This image portrays the Samaritan and wounded man in a traditional Asian painted landscape with the Samaritan wearing typical Korean garb. The emphasis on the landscape with the particularized rendering of tree leaves, more than the depiction of the Samaritan and traveler, relates this image to established Asian painting traditions. An image of the Good Samaritan by Tadoa Tanaka uses traditional Japanese emphasis on the brush line to convey a vivid rendering of the Samaritan and the victim. The brush line flowing from the body of the artist unimpeded to the paper is an important component that gives visual energy to both Chinese and Japanese calligraphy and painting.

The Good Samaritan was a story told by Jesus to answer a specific question asked by the lawyer, "Who is my neighbor?" In visual images of the Good Samaritan, the particular appearance of the traveler, the robbers, the Samaritan, and the innkeeper reveals the ways in which people understood this parable at different historical times. However, the use of colored glass, energized ink brush work, or bravura oil paint surface has given the Good Samaritan a distinctive visual form in each of the examples we have explored. This visual form of the image is as much a part of its total meaning for the people who see it as are the specific narrative components. By their very nature as visual objects, the images of the Good Samaritan have provided unique windows into the meaning of the parable for men and women of different times and places.