Artwork Page for The Seed Falling by the Wayside

Details / Information for The Seed Falling by the Wayside

Series Title: Parable of the Sower

The Seed Falling by the Wayside

1574
(Flemish, 1537–1612)
(Flemish)
Medium
engraving
Credit Line
Catalogue raisonné
New Hollstein, Philips Galle 148 i/iii
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Two allegorical figures, Negligence and Sluggishness, seated at either side of the sleeping sower indicate two sources of his problems.

Description

This is one of a series of four prints portraying the biblical parable of the sower, made in Antwerp (in present-day Belgium) at the end of the 1500s. The parable compares types of soil to people in the world: one hardened; one fickle; one distracted by things of the world; and one with an open heart, ready to accept God. In this image of the sower hardened to the word of God, the man has fallen asleep beside the field while a small devil steals the word of God from his heart.
A horizontally oriented print in black ink on beige paper depicts three figures in a landscape. In the foreground, a woman sits beside a spilling jar to our left. Centrally, a bearded man rests his head on his hand, holding a smoking branch. To our right, a woman reclines near a donkey. Behind, a man sows seeds in a field below mountains and buildings. Latin text lines the bottom margin beneath cross-hatched trees.

The Seed Falling by the Wayside

1574

Philip Galle, Gerard van Groeningen

(Flemish, 1537–1612), (Flemish)
Netherlands

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