128 - The Good Samaritan at Vincigliata, 1898

The Good Samaritan at Vincigliata, 1898 Oil on cardboard 25 x 64.5 cm Signed lower left, localized and dated MAVD 98 Fiesole Bears old exhibition and shipping labels on the back. This painting hung in the Priory’s living room. Provenance: Maurice Denis Collection Noële Boulet Collection François Denis Collection Private Collection Exhibitions: Exhibition of works by P. Bonnard, M. Denis, Ibels, Ranson, X. Roussel, Sérusier, Vallotton, and Vuillard; Vollard Gallery; 1898 PARIS, Vollard, no. 21 (“Studies after the Florentine Masters—The Good Samaritan”) Maurice Denis, Studies from Italy 1898–1904, Galerie Druet 1904, Paris, No. 72 (“1898 Vincigliata—The Good Samaritan”) First Joint Exhibition of a Group of German and French Artists, 1907, Berlin, Eduard Schulte Gallery, no. 2 (“The Good Samaritan”), likely our painting Maurice Denis Exhibition, Pavillon de Marsan, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1924, no. 75 (“The Good Samaritan (Vincigliata) (1898)”) Maurice Denis Exhibition, 1945, Musée d’Art Moderne, no. 66 Maurice Denis Exhibition; 1945–46, Provincial Museums, No. 7 “Gauguin and His Mais” Exhibition, Galerie Kleber, 1949, Paris (according to the 1985 exhibition) Exhibition: Bonnard, Vuillard, and the Nabis, 1888–1903, Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1955, Paris; no. 100 Maurice Denis Exhibition: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Lithographs, Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, Albi; 1963; No. 62 The Nabis Exhibition, 1963–1964, Mannheim, “The Nabis...” Maurice Denis Exhibition, Musée de l’Orangerie, 1970, Paris; no. 119 Maurice Denis Exhibition, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, and Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, 1981; no. 45, reproduced in black and white Maurice Denis Exhibition, Alençon, 1985; no. 25, reproduced in color on page 25 Maurice Denis Exhibition, Galerie Berès, Paris; 1992; no. 40 Maurice Denis Exhibition, 1870–1943; Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts—Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum—Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery—Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum; 1994/1995; no. 99, reproduced in color Bibliography: André Peraté; *L’art et les Artistes*, 1923, reproduced in black and white on page 68 (with the date “1904”) Suzanne Barazzetti, *Maurice Denis*, 1945, pages 242, 281 A certificate confirming inclusion in the catalog raisonné of Maurice Denis’s work may be issued to the purchaser upon request to the Maurice Denis Committee. Painted in Fiesole in 1898, *The Good Samaritan at Vincigliata* is one of those works in which Maurice Denis achieves a unique synthesis between the landscape as experienced, religious tradition, and the formal explorations of the Nabi group. The Gospel scene unfolds here against a Tuscan landscape whose topographical reality seems transfigured by memory and color. The subject is drawn from the parable of the Good Samaritan, as recounted in the Gospel according to Saint Luke. A traveler, left wounded by the roadside after being robbed by bandits, is successively ignored by several passersby. Only a Samaritan—a stranger and, in the context of the parable, an unexpected figure of compassion—stops to help him, tends to his wounds, and entrusts him to the hospitality of an inn. Through this story, Christ replaces the narrow notion of social or religious proximity with a more universal conception of one’s neighbor: the neighbor is whoever shows mercy. Denis, however, does not depict the episode according to the conventions of history painting or traditional religious scenes. The narrative blends into the landscape. The traveler and his benefactor, accompanied by their mounts, traverse a stylized countryside where hills, cypress trees, and architectural elements form vast swaths of color. In the background, the silhouettes of trees punctuate the glowing expanse of the hillsides; on the right, the inn toward which the Good Samaritan is heading situates the biblical episode within the contemporary architecture of the Italian landscape. "Fiesole, a small Tuscan town perched on a hill brimming with terraces, gardens, olive trees, and cypresses that overlooks Florence and the Arno Valley, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Maurice Denis, as it is for so many other artists. During his stays, he appreciated—oh, how much!—the beauty of the surroundings, the architecture, the churches… But what amazed him most was the extraordinary view of Florence and the surrounding countryside.” [Carina Schäfer in Jean-Paul Bouillon (ed.), Maurice Denis: [exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, October 31, 2006–January 21, 2007], Paris, Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2006, page 195.] Italy played a decisive role in Maurice Denis’s artistic development and body of work. His stays in Fiesole exposed him to a landscape whose harmony and light resonated with his own conception of painting. Tuscany is also the land of the masters