Collection

Good Samaritan

Szymon Czechowicz

Basic information

ID: Ж-6140
Author: Szymon Czechowicz
Name: Good Samaritan
Date of creation: c.1767 (?)
Country: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 186 x 174.5

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: religious painting
Plot: The parable of the Good Samaritan
Provenance: the Rzewuski collection (Pidhirtsi Castle)
Exposition: Zhovkva Castle

Information about author

Author: Szymon Czechowicz
Artist's lifetime: 1689–1775
Biography: Szymon Czechowicz was born in an impoverished noble family in Krakow on July 28, 1689. He became an orphan at a young age. Thanks to the support of his patron and philanthropist Franciszek Ossolinski, the artist went to Rome, where he studied painting at the Academy of St. Luke under the guidance of Carlo Maratti. The first professional works of the artist were copies after famous painters, such as Rubens, Van Dyck and others; the artist drew upon their iconographic compositions. In 1765, at the invitation of Waclaw Rzewuski, he arrived at Pidhirtsi Castle in the Lviv region; by 1767, Czechowicz created 107 works that became part of the castle interior and a kind of the first museum of the artist. During the last period of his life, Szymon Czechowicz worked in Lithuania and Warsaw, where he opened his own art studio. The artist died on July 21, 1775. He was considered to be one of the best artists of the Baroque era in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the artist's creative legacy there are portraits and monumental paintings on sacred themes.

Object description

This is a multi-figure composition in the center of which there is a naked male body, from which a white cloth falls. The body hanging from the white horse is supported by a half-naked man in a blue loincloth. To his right there is a figure of a black servant in striped clothes. The central figure of the composition is the figure of a man (a nobleman) turned to the left (in profile to the viewer) to the body falling from the horse, which he supports with his right hand. This is an older man with a thick black beard. He is dressed in a high colored headdress, boots, and a crimson coat, which is the dominant element of the composition. Behind the nobleman there are female and male figures. In his left hand, the man holds a red headdress that resembles a classic beret.

Good Samaritan

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