This etching depicts the final scene in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) in which the Samaritan stopped to help a traveler who had been attacked by robbers. Here he has brought the wounded man on horseback to an inn and pays for the man's care and lodging. This is one of two etchings in which Rembrandt reproduced his own paintings. The Good Samaritan repeats with a number of variations the composition of his painting in the Wallace Collection, London. Among Rembrandt's additions here to the largely empty foreground that appeared in the painting is the defecating dog that adds a note of everyday reality to the biblical scene.

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