Christ and the Samaritan Woman

In 1603 Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, nephew of the reigning pope Clement VIII, asked Annibale Carracci for a set of landscape lunettes for the chapel of his palace in Rome. Those half-moon pictures, with their calm groves, winding roads and distant towns, became a model for anyone painting ideal landscape in the city, and this small copper disc borrows directly from them. The Gospel story is almost a detail inside the view. Christ sits by Jacob's well and points as he speaks, while the Samaritan woman is caught mid-step, half turning back towards him. Her water jar waits at the foot of the well. Further off, two men walk out along the road from the town, most likely the disciples returning with the food they had gone to buy. The whole scene measures just 25 centimetres across.