Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her: “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She said to him: “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?” Jesus replied: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never be thirsty again. Indeed, the water I give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him: “Sir, give me this water, so I will never be thirsty again and will not have to come back here to ·get more water.” (John 4, 7–15)

One of the themes depicted early in Christian art is the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. This episode is found exclusively in the Gospel of John, where it is recounted that as Jesus passed through the city of Sychar in Samaria, he stopped at Jacob’s well, the same place where the biblical patriarch fell deeply in love with Rachel. There, he asked a woman drawing water to give him a drink. She asked how he, being a Jew, would speak to her, since Samaritans and Jews did not associate with each other.

Felipe Nieva represents the scene with Jesus sitting next to the well and two women standing up, each holding a water jar. One woman seems to be paying closer attention to him; she even appears to be smiling and engaging in a conversation that will ultimately lead her to recognize the messianic nature of Jesus.