Landscape with the Parable of the Good Samaritan

In 1663 this small panel was listed at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck, where Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol had assembled one of the great Habsburg collections of art and curiosities. By 1783 it hung in the imperial picture gallery in Vienna.

The subject is the parable Jesus tells in Luke's gospel. A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho is beaten by robbers and left half dead. A priest and then a Levite, a temple assistant, see him and pass by. A Samaritan, from a people many Jews of the time held in contempt, stops, binds his wounds and takes him to an inn. Bles keeps these figures tiny. A castle on a towering rock fills the centre, and the wounded man and his helper are tucked into the shade at the lower left.