GIOVANNI LANFRANCO, follower of
Parma, 1582 – Rome, 1647
Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well
oil on canvas, cm 95×75
In this painting, the evangelic encounter between Jesus and the woman from Samaria (John 4:5-29) is depicted with geometric rigor: the circular well, the bodies of the protagonists that, with their posture, lean into the diagonals, echoing each other in parallel. A slanting light falls on the figures, highlighting them in the shadow, sliding on the surface of the cylinder in the center, until resting on the ewer, isolated and prominent like in a Velázquez. A thick forest acts as a backdrop for the figures, offering a glimpse of a villa in the distance, that the cypresses help us place in a Mediterranean location.
The style of the painting echoes without a doubt the teaching of one of the greatest artists of the seventeenth century, Parma based Giovanni Lanfranco. Active in both Rome and Naples, the painter represents, within the Emilian school, the merge of classicism and Correggio’s influence, a source of baroque dynamism and brave perspectives. Lanfranco’s activity, which branched out in his native Parma and in Rome until reaching the Spanish vice-royalty, makes it difficult to understand which of the schools he came in contact with generated the author of this painting.
Regarding the artist’s activity, of particular interest is the comparison with the ‘David drags the head of Goliath’ preserved in the Fondazione Longhi, in Florence, a work that the artist from Parma likely made in the first decade of the seventeenth century, around the same time of the frescoes for the Buongiovanni chapel in Sant’Agostino, in Rome. In this work, part of the critic’s collection, we find a similar slanting light, some anatomical features, and the approximate rendition of the buildings. What differs is the matter that in the painting here presented is more Venetian, losing the compactness and the drawn turning of the shapes in favor of a greater and more insisted ‘pittoricismo’.
At the bottom, a noble coat of arms within a shaped shield could offer the opportunity to establish who ordered the commission.