The Good Samaritan

Aegidius Sadeler II (1570–1629) was a Flemish engraver who was principally active at the Prague court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and his successors. He was the leading member of the second generation of this important engraving/publishing dynasty.

His early engavings were mostly faithful copies of works by Albrecht Dürer in the Imperial collection and copies of paintings by notable Italian painters such as Raphael, Tintoretto, Parmigianino, Barocci and Titian or by Northern painters who worked there, such as Paul Bril and Denys Calvaert. In Prague he also engraved portraits of the notables of Rudolf's court, and collaborated with Bartholomeus Spranger, the great Northern Mannerist painter and a compatriot of Sadeler's. 

This engraving, based on an original work by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), gives overwhelming predominance to the sublime, rocky landscape, but no viewer can miss the foreground left figures of the unfortunate traveller being set upon by his attackers. The priest and the Levite who famously pass by, followed by the Good Samaritan, are yet to appear. The Latin inscription focusses more on the attack than the Biblical story; a matching print, not in the Te Papa collection, shows the Samaritan tending the traveller's wounds.

This engraving is in the so-called George IV album of Old Master prints, acquired by the Dominion Museum, forerunner of Te Papa, in 1910.

See: Wikipedia, 'Aegidius Sadeler', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegidius_Sadeler

Dr Mark Stocker       Curator, Historical International Art             February 2017