The Good Samaritan

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This etching depicts the final scene in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) in which the Samaritan stopped to help a traveler who had been attacked by robbers. Here he has brought the wounded man on horseback to an inn and pays for the man's care and lodging. This is one of two etchings in which Rembrandt reproduced his own paintings. The Good Samaritan repeats with a number of variations the composition of his painting in the Wallace Collection, London. Among Rembrandt's additions here to the largely empty foreground that appeared in the painting is the defecating dog that adds a note of everyday reality to the biblical scene.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art