''Parable of the Sower'' is a 1557

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...

by Dutch and Flemish painter

Pieter Bruegel the Elder Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; – 9 September 1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genr ...

. It is now in the

Timken Museum of Art The Timken Museum of Art is a fine art museum, established in 1965 and located at 1500 El Prado in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, close to the San Diego Museum of Art. History The groundwork for the museum was laid in 1951 when Walter ...

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Background

In 1553, Bruegel left

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

to study in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. He passed through and made sketches of the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

on his return trip. These drawings influenced the mountains seen in the upper right background.

Analysis

The painting depicts the Parable of the Sower found in the gospels of

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, and

Luke People *Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...

and is among the earliest signed paintings and large-scale landscapes by Bruegel. The sower himself is seen spreading seeds in the lower left foreground. A church and a Flemish village line the river that runs from the lower right to the upper left of the painting. On the right bank of the river, near a small group of boats,

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

is seen preaching the titular parable to a crowd. John Wilson, executive director of the Timken Museum, finds that the painting exhibits the detail, religiosity, and human element found in Bruegel's later paintings. He explains, "Bruegel totally humanizes the spiritual nature of this religious subject matter...Little things catch your eye, like the tower of a church, the thatched hut, birds and horses." Larry Silver of the

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suggests a parallel between the significance of the painting and the meaning of the parable. He writes that the painting "uses the image of a sower, whose seeds were partly devoured by birds, partly fruitless when they fell upon stony soil or were choked by thorns, and partly successful when they found fertile soil. Brilliantly, therefore, Bruegel selected Jesus’s first parable as the subject for his own inaugural landscape painting, a work that planted the seed for his own affinity with landscape."

References

{{ACArt 1557 paintings Paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Paintings based on New Testament parables Landscape painting Paintings in the collection of the Timken Museum of Art