The Good Samaratan 1861

Rodolphe Bresdin created "The Good Samaritan," a lithograph, sometime in the mid-19th century. Bresdin, a man of deep Catholic faith, renders a scene of intense sympathy amid deep complexity. The Good Samaritan, as the parable goes, is an outsider, a man from a group despised by the Jewish people, who pauses to aid a man in need. In Bresdin’s version, the figure is dwarfed by an abundance of leaves and fronds. The density of the forest, teeming with life, presents a world of growth and decay, where nature is indifferent to human suffering. While the Samaritan tends to the injured man, a figure rides in on a camel, ushering in the possibility of trade, commerce, and perhaps, a future. Bresdin creates a world of both spiritual possibility and material reality, testing the viewer's own sense of compassion. The piece asks us if we are able to act in the face of overwhelming despair and suffering.