This beautiful painting is a newly rediscovered, previously unpublished version of one of De Troy's favorite religious subjects.Taken from the Gospel of John (4:1-30), De Troy's painting depicts the encounter between Christ and the Woman of Samaria beside a well outside the town of Sychar. After asking the startled adulteress for a drink from her pitcher, Jesus tells her that 'everyone who drinks the water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I shall give him will never suffer thirst any more'.
De Troy is first recorded as having exhibited a version of the subject in 1706 at the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, but that painting seems to be lost (see Christophe Léribault, Jean-François de Troy 1679-1752, Paris, 2002, *P.15). The present painting is a more beautiful variation of a version of the subject that is dated by Léribault to circa 1706-1708 (Léribault, 2002, p. 17); on the basis of its style, we can date the present lot to circa 1710-1714.