The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 24, 2024

The Seed Received among the Thorns, from the Parable of the Sower

The Seed Received among the Thorns, from the Parable of the Sower

c. 1573
(Flemish)
Belgium, Flanders, Antwerp, 16th century
Black chalk, gray wash, and brown ink, on cream laid paper; traces of transfer
Sheet: 19.7 x 25.5 cm (7 3/4 x 10 1/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2012.4
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

The stage-like format of this drawing recalls enacted "plays of meaning," or moralizing plays, performed in the Netherlands at the time.

Description

This design for a print is from a suite portraying the biblical parable of the sower. 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. The third sower (here, a pilgrim) distractedly throws his seeds among thorns. He is surrounded by two female personifications—Cares of the World, and Avarice (extreme greed for money). Behind them, the fourth sower successfully plants his crop. The content and its presentation exemplify the instructive tone of the period’s moral discourse.
  • ?-2011
    Private Collection, New York, NY
    2011
    sold, Doyle New York, October 26, 2011, sale 11CN03, Lot 24 [as Flemish School]
    2011-2012
    with Christopher Bishop Fine Art, Milford, CT
    2012-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
  • Christopher Bishop Fine Art. Master Drawings Catalog 2014. Milford, CT: Christopher Bishop Fine Art, 2014. p. 61. Reproduced: p. 61
    Hautekeete, Stefaan, ed. From Floris to Rubens: Master Drawings from a Belgian Private Collection. Ghent: Snoeck, 2016. p. 79 (entry by Stijn Alsteens). Reproduced: p. 79, fig. 1.
    Alsteens, Stijn. Review of Corpus of Drawings in Midwestern Collections, [II B]: Sixteenth century Northern European Drawings by Burton L. Dunbar et al., Master Drawings 51, no. 1 (2013): 105-15. p. 107 www.jstor.org
    Peters, Emily J., Laura Ritter, William Griswold, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, and Koenraad Jonckheere. Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel. Cleveland, OH : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 249-250, no. 78
  • Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (October 9, 2022-January 8, 2023).
  • {{cite web|title=The Seed Received among the Thorns, from the Parable of the Sower|url=false|author=Gerard van Groeningen|year=c. 1573|access-date=24 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2012.4