O Rembrandta "Krajobrazie z miłosiernym Samarytaninem"

English Title: On Rembrandt's "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" once again

In: Rocznik Historii Sztuki, 33 (2008), pp. 53-64

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Translation of abstract (English)

In 2003-2004 a painting by Rembrandt, the "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" from the Czartoryski Museum at Kraków was cleansed which restored its former spatiality blurred by dirty varnish and revealed a series of details. On the occasion of the Rembrandt Year the picture was sent to the exhibition entitled "Rembrandt's Landscapes" held at Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden, while at Krakow there was an exhibition-installation organised, consisting of the photographic enlargements of the whole painting and its details, called "On the Way to Jericho". The painting’s clearing and the possibility to thoroughly analyse its enlargements made it possible to probe the world of this piece of art more deeply. Compared with the few preserved small individual oil landscapes by Rembrandt, the Kraków’s painting distinguishes itself by a high level of drama and features some universal truths also about a man of our times. The evangelical figures are depicted not only "in the background" of the landscape, but they also are related to this dramatic landscape in a well thought-out way. The artist refers to the known to him previous depictions of this motif in Netherlandic graphic art and painting, and makes use of certain means developed there. But the choice of the specific moment from Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan appearing in the Gospel of Luke was made in a very personal and individual way. Special attention merits the originality of uniting of the two men: the wounded and the Samaritan supporting him on the horse as in a one figure, a sign of mercy. Two elderly persons (and not young lovers) standing at the edge of a forest with scared faces must have witnessed the brutal robbery. In the painting we find several time layers: the Biblical one, contemporary to the artist (Dutch reality) and universal (the landscape of "theatrum mundi" that can be a background for any event at any given time). The article concludes with the remarks on the interest in Rembrandt's works in Poland by the end of the 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th century, when the picture brought to Poland in 1774 by painter Jan Piotr Norblin landed in the Czartoryskis’ collection, and the piece of information about the only know painting copy of this picture made at that time.