Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Italian; 17th-century
Ottawa, Canada: National Gallery of Canada
68%
Christ and the Woman of Samaria. 1647. Oil on canvas
Guercino painted this same scene a number of times; this one’s among his better goes at it. As always with this artist, you get the sense that there’s an easing up at play in this painting — that Guercino is coasting on the innovations of others rather than forging his own path. In a word, Guercino is mannered Baroque. But he’s also sometimes good: the foreshortened well pushes Christ back just barely into depth and, by terminating to open onto some empty space at right, dynamizes the woman’s pose and draws it towards the picture plane; the near antagonism of the two figures’ postures with respect to each other — the Samaritan twisting away from Christ, Christ pulling her back to the left edge of the canvas by flicking his fingers — makes the scene feel tense and teetering; elements extraneous to the action, like buildings and foliage, have been kept to a minimum, and are only included to the extent that they further animate the relationship between the figures (the tree at right, for instance, seems to nudge the woman toward Jesus). There’s little to remark on, however, in terms of color or modeling: the brooding contours are of their time and don’t seem integral to the arrangement. (TFS, 2025)
Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art
52%
Christ and the Samaritan Woman. c1650. Oil on canvas
You can see here the revolutions in painting of the early 17th century — namely, the Baroque's violent engagement with picture-making's raw facts — giving way to a softness and an easiness that is counter to art. The whole subsequent history of sentimental painting seems thus to be laid out in Guercino. It's recognizable in: the uncomplicated poise of the composition, whereby Christ's three-quarter turn balances out the Samaritan woman's stance in profile but fails either to carve the picture into further depth or to send it out towards the front of the canvas; that shrinking, noncommittal repoussoir at left, which bounds the picture without demanding that your eye go anywhere in particular; the shadowy modeling, which gives the figures a sort of drama, but one that doesn't relate to the scene's unfolding in space; the ambivalence of the sky and the town with respect to the action in the foreground; the invisibility of Guercino's handling (especially in the figures), which is less a virtue of illusionism and more an equivocation. There is indeed resolve in this painting, but it's a resolve that points to the pure pleasures of kitsch. (TFS, 2025)