The Good Samaritan

The man from Samaria pushes the robbed man onto his horse. In the background to the left two men can be seen who let the wounded man lay on the road when they passed him by. They were a priest and a man from the house of Levi; obviously they were not as righteous as there reputations would suggest. Only the Samaritan helped the wounded man.

Van Gogh was staying in an institution for the mentally ill when he painted this work, in May 1890. It is a mirrored copy of Eugène Delacroix' Good Samaritan. Van Gogh also made a copy of Delacroix' Pietà.