Domenico Fetti

Domenico Fetti had a simple, quietly radical idea: to paint the parables of the Gospels as if they were happening on an ordinary street. His Good Samaritan or his pearl-seeking merchant look less like sacred history than scenes of everyday working life, lit with the warm, broken light he took from northern painters then in Rome.

Born in Rome around 1589, he made his name in Mantua as court painter to Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, who set him decorating the ducal palace and painting small parable pictures for a private study. They proved so popular that his workshop copied them again and again.

In 1622, after quarrels with local rivals, he moved to Venice, where the city's colour deepened his own. He had barely arrived when he died the next year, still in his early thirties. In his Good Samaritan the rescuer heaves the wounded traveller onto his own horse under a heavy evening sky, the holy story dressed as a roadside incident.