Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari)
Italian (Venetian); 16th-century
Vienna, Austria: Kunsthistorisches Museum
86%
Christ and the Samaritan Woman. c1585. Oil on canvas (with Workshop)
This painting is all in the distance between its unflagging structure — Christ and the Samaritan appear cut into stone (not to mention the actual stone that's behind them) — and the delicacy, the freedom with which it's been painted. Look, for instance, at how Jesus' extended finger is coterminous with the foliage behind it, and at the way the woman opposite him vicegrips the well with both hands instead of moving leftwards to meet her Lord — but then, also, notice the sensuous handling of paint in the blank span of sky between these two figures (shades of Correggio's blotches here), or their lavish fabrics. Where these two registers of the painting, its firmness and its flux, collide with each other and collapse, is where Veronese reveals its greatness. This happens, for instance, in the stone pillar behind the chain at right, and in the group of three figures creeping out from the hazy midground. (TFS, 2025)