This intimately-scaled panel depicts an episode of Christ’s ministry, recounted in the Gospel of Saint John (4:4-26). Traveling through Samaria, Jesus sat to rest by the well of Jacob, asking for a drink from a woman who had approached to draw water. Discussing the water in the well, Christ spoke to the woman of the water of everlasting life, revealing Himself as the Saviour of which she had heard. Her testimony of His identity later served to bring about the conversion of many others in her tribe. Santacroce’s composition exists in another version, of almost exactly the same dimensions, now in the Museo Borgogna in Vercelli. Interestingly, this painting survives with a pendant depicting the Noli me tangere, suggesting the possibility that such would originally also have been the case with the present work. The pairing of these two subjects was not unusual. Indeed, both showed significant moments of the revelation of Christ’s divinity: at the well when he revealed himself to the Samaritan woman as the Messiah of which she spoke, and in the garden when the Magdalene recognised Him following the Resurrection.

Born the son of a tailor, Girolamo da Santacroce trained in the studio of Gentile Bellini in Venice. He sustained a close relationship with his master, acting as a witness for the will of Bellini’s second wife Maria Trevisan on 20 October 1503, and later named as a beneficiary of Gentile’s own testament, in which he was bequeathed a group of drawings to be shared with another apprentice. Bellini also lent Girolamo a number of the drawings he had made in Constantinople at the court of Sultan Mehmed II. Santacroce was profoundly influenced by the work of his master’s brother, Giovanni Bellini, whose workshop he entered in circa 1507. Here, he also became aware of other painters working in the Bellini circle, like Cima de Conegliano, Carpaccio and Palma il Vecchio. By 1517, Girolamo had established his own independent practice in the parish of San Antonio in Venice, where he established himself as an active artistic force throughout the Venetian lagoon as well as further afield in the Veneto.