Cleveland Museum of Art

The Seed Falling by the Wayside

Date

1574

Medium

engraving

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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

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