Sleeping Peasants near Fields (Parable of the Weeds) (1650–53): Art, History and Details

Sleeping Peasants near Fields (Parable of the Weeds) (1650–53) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Simon de Vlieger (Dutch, 1601–1653).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

During the 1600s Protestant leaders denounced visual representations, in a belief that a strict understanding of the scriptures was the only way to achieve salvation. As a result, Protestants did not generally commission religious images. However, where religious painting did appear, they often depicted verses from the Bible with strict didactic values, such as Sleeping Peasants near Fields (Parable of the Weeds). The subject of this painting is the Parable of the Weeds from Matthew 13:24-30. Simon de Vlieger has illustrated the point in the story where the peasants sleep after sowing good seeds, and the enemy, depicted here as a satyr, mixes in bad seeds in the fields as well. When the weeds begin to grow, confused, the peasants ask the farmer if they should remove the seeds. The farmer replies that they should let the weeds and wheat grow together, and he will destroy the weeds after the harvest. The lesson of the story is that good and evil people often mix together; but in the end the pious will prevail and the wicked will be destroyed.

Object facts

• Title: Sleeping Peasants near Fields (Parable of the Weeds)
• Date: 1650–53
• Creator attribution: Simon de Vlieger (Dutch, 1601–1653)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 122 x 161.5 x 8 cm (48 1/16 x 63 9/16 x 3 1/8 in.); Unframed: 90.4 x 130.4 cm (35 9/16 x 51 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1975.76

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 2 (February 1976): 31–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.