(Pistoia 1606–1681 Rome)
Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the well,
indistinctly signed and dated on the base of the well lower center: HYACINTVS/GIM…/1639,
oil on canvas, 76.5 x 62 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, New York, 19 April 2007, lot 93 (as Giacinto Gimignani)

We are grateful to Ursula Verena Fischer Pace for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph and for her help in cataloguing the present painting.

The painting shows the scene described in the Gospel of Saint John (4: 1–42) in which Christ reveals himself to the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well as the promised redeemer and succeeds in converting her to his teachings. Their encounter has always represented a symbol of the sacrament of baptism. In this intimate depiction, focusing on the dialogue between Christ and the Samaritan woman, the figures are viewed from close up as they have been pushed to the foreground of the composition. They appear in front of and next to the fountain against the backdrop of a tree-clustered, hilly landscape ascending in the distance and a fortified town. Christ’s attire stands out for its powerful colour contrasts, with a vibrant red for the undergarment set off against the deep blue of his elaborately draped cloak. The colours used for the standing figure of the Samaritan woman on the right are more subdued, as she wears a yellowish golden dress over a white undergarment falling down from her left shoulder and a pale blue coat.

In 1637, Gimignani had already tackled the subject of Christ and the Woman of Samaria in the form of a large and more crowded composition that had probably been commissioned from him by a member of the Medici family (243 x 272 cm, signed and dated 1637, Florence, Corsini Collection, Palazzo Corsini; U. V. Fischer, Giacinto Gimignani [1606–1681]. Eine Studie zur römischen Malerei des Seicento, doctoral thesis, Freiburg 1973, p. 137, no. 5). The Corsini painting shows the two figures at the fountain in the reverse direction, their gestures slightly differing, but against a similar landscape backdrop. The present painting could be described as a more intimate and abbreviated variant of the larger format. After the mid-1630s, Gimignani developed his own artistic language of expression, which, however, still betrayed a Cortonesque figural and landscape repertoire as a result of his activity in Pietro da Cortona’s workshop at the beginning of his stay in Rome in 1630. His female figures in profile inspired by antiquity and frequently dressed in the ancient costumes are a characteristic element of his art and can almost be regarded as painted signatures of his works. Around the 1640s, his preference for a calmed-down formal idiom not only brings him close to Poussin and his French contemporaries active in Rome (for example, Pierre Mignard, François Perrier, Charles Dufresnoy), but also to Alessandro Turchi, whose daughter Gimignani married in 1640. It seems to have been no coincidence that both Turchi and Gimignani worked for Parisian patrons at the time. The intense palette and tranquil atmosphere of Giacinto’s paintings may have been inspired by Turchi’s works. The present painting is a characteristic example of Gimignani’s highly productive output from those years.