(Antwerp, active in the first half of the 16th Century)
The Parable of the Good Samaritan,
oil on panel, 85.5 x 65 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Spain, since the early 20th century

Literature:
A. Diéguez Rodríguez, Dos nuevas pinturas del Maestro de Pablo y Barnabás en España, in: Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar, 107, 2011, pp. 62–66 and 69–70

First published by Ana Diéguez Rodriguez in 2011, the present panel is an important addition to the oeuvre of the accomplished Antwerp Mannerist painter identified as the Master of Paul and Barnabas.

Peter van den Brink further confirms the attribution to the master on the basis of a photograph. Van den Brink states that the present picture is especially close to the Master of Paul and Barnabas’s Fall of Man, conserved in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht and the Rockox triptych (executed in conjunction with Jan Sanders van Hemessen) in the Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp.

The present work depicts Christ seated on the left, responding to a question from a Hebrew Doctor, clothed in a tabard embroidered with script, who stands beside St. Peter, while seated around them are other Apostles. The Parable of the Good Samaritan unfolds behind, with the inn mentioned in the tale off to the right. The compositional scheme illustrates the skills the master honed in the studios of both Pieter Coecke van Aelst, where he painted altar wings to accompany central religious scenes by Coecke, and his experience of rendering landscape backgrounds for van Hemessen, as in the aforementioned Rockox Triptych.

In the current panel, Diéguez Rodríguez comments on the master’s adept modelling, with the saturated tones of the costumes of the figural grouping in foreground giving way to the subtle hues of the more distant planes, with the greys and blues diluted to fade into the sky. Typical of the master are both the dynamic, smaller figures, of the Samaritan washing the wounds of the traveller, with a Cohen and a Levi passing by, along with the full-length group listening to Christ, particularly the handling of their facial features and hair. Van den Brink adds that the present work further sheds light on the connection between the master and Antwerp trifecta of Coecke, van Hemessen and the young Pieter Aertsen.

The hand of the Master of Paul and Barnabas was first identified in 1976 from Aertsen’s The Miracle of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, (inv. no. 4315). At the time, Mary Braman Buchan suggested that Aertsen made use of an anonymous assistant for some of the figures and the background, whom she christened The Master of Paul and Barnabas (see M. Braman Buchan, The paintings of Pieter Aersten, in: Marsyas, 1976, no. 18, p. 45).

Technical analysis by Gianluca Poldi:

The peculiar bluish green hue of the vegetation and of the far architectures is due to azurite, variously mixed with lead-based yellow and lead white, while azurite alone was employed in the mantle of the man with the black hat in the background. The other blue areas, i.e. the sky, the faraway mountain towards the horizon, the blue robes and collar of the central figures, are obtained with smalt blue, not apparently discoloured. The same blue pigment, a grinded blue glass containing cobalt, is preferred to azurite in giving the violet hues: the purple robe of Christ with the red cloak sat on the left, where the purple tone of the dress is due to a mix of smalt and red lake applied over a red basis. The bluish purple of the robe of the elderly man who enters the scene from the right employs more smalt blue and again is painted over a red-pink background: a clever solution to obtain a modulated violet colour. The same blue mixed with red can be found in the pale purple clothes. Smalt is also used for the letters of the Hebrew alphabet written on the edge of the figure’s habit in the centre, whose green seems to be made with verdigris, to differentiate itself from the other greens and give a tone more suited to a fabric. While azurite is in the pale blue of the stripes in the borders of the same clothes. Lead-tin yellow constitutes the lighter yellows, ochre the orange or yellow-brown shadows. The only red lake we could find is a carmine-type one. It is used widely, as well as vermillion, the latter employed in the flesh tones like brown earths, mixed to lead white.

IR reflectograms allow to recover a fascinating drawing that surely enlightens the quality of this painter. It is made quickly, freehand, with black chalk, demonstrating the absolute fluidity and mastery of the graphic medium in the hand of this artist. A fairly sparse hatching is present not infrequently to indicate the areas to be painted in the shade. In front of a sketched, rather detailed but not particularly finished drawing, the master has to make some adjustments in painting, typically in the position of the eyes and the heads.