Parable of the Good Samaritan

The Parable of the Good Samaritan — in which a traveler beaten by robbers is helped by a Samaritan, the traditional enemy of his people, rather than by a priest or Levite who pass by — was one of the most morally urgent parables Christ told. Fetti's version at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, painted around 1622, participates in his broader parable series. By rendering the biblical narrative in contemporary dress and a generic urban setting, Fetti translates the parable's moral lesson into immediately accessible terms: this is not a story of the distant past but a challenge to present behavior. The Samaritan's practical compassion — binding wounds, providing transportation — was interpreted in Counter-Reformation preaching as a model of active Christian charity.

The composition focuses on the physical act of care: the Samaritan bending over the injured man, his hands at work. Fetti uses warm light to ennoble this act of service, treating it with the same pictorial dignity he brought to sacred subjects. The injured man's pallor contrasts with the Samaritan's ruddy, active health. Paint handling is fluid and confident.