Landscape with the Good Samaritan c. 1837

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps painted "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" in France, sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Here we see Decamps referencing a well-known parable from the Bible. The politics of imagery are interesting here. Decamps combines a seemingly objective, almost documentary, interest in landscape with a religious subject, but the figures are small and rather insignificant compared to the landscape. The focus is not on the hero of the story, but on the setting of it. One might ask whether this signals a shift away from traditional religious values toward a secular interest in the natural world. Was Decamps making a statement about the changing social structures of his time? To better understand this painting, it would be useful to research the social and cultural history of 19th-century France. What role did religion play in public life? What were the major political and economic trends? And how did artists like Decamps engage with these issues in their work?