The Good Samaritan 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. In this painting which shows a Samaritan wounded man being carried to the entrance of an inn where he will be tended, Rembrandt defines the key roles that the doorway was to play in his art, either between two states of the drama or two different states of existence. Viewed in this way, the doorway may be seen as the visual equivalent of a new chapter heading.
