Italian school; 17th century.

Italian school; XVII century.
"Christ and the Samaritan woman".
Oil on canvas.
It presents faults and Repainting on the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 31 x 25 cm.
In this devotional scene the author reduces the composition only to the great monumentality of its protagonists. In a narrow space we can appreciate the figure of Christ leaning on the well's curbstone, dressed with dark blue tunic and red mantle, and to his right a young lady holding a jug and addressing Jesus. The gestures of the figures indicate that both characters are establishing a conversation, since the figure of Christ adopts a familiar posture with respect to the young lady. He opens his hands as if he were narrating something to himself, while the woman adopts a passive attitude of listening.
Due to the iconographic characteristics of the work, the theme can be identified as the one known as "Jesus and the Samaritan woman" or "The Samaritan woman at the well" or "Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar". Such a scene is related in the Bible by St. John (4: 4-26). "7A woman of Samaria came to draw water; and Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.8 For his disciples had gone into the city to buy food.9 The Samaritan woman said to him, 'How can you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for I am a Samaritan woman? For Jews and Samaritans do not treat one another.10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would ask him, and he would give you living water.11 The woman said to him, 'Lord, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; from where then do you have living water?12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, from which he and his sons and his flocks drank?13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again;14 but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.15 And the woman said unto him, Lord, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. The representation of this story has a long tradition because of the allusions in the text to water as "Divine Grace" or "Living Water" and because of the veiled allusion to preaching and evangelization in it. Thus, we have it in paleochristian sarcophagi ("Sarcophagus of the Trees", Louvre Museum), in Mount Athos, in the work of Duccio, etc.