The Seed Falling by the Wayside (1574): Art, History and Details

The Seed Falling by the Wayside (1574) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Philip Galle (Flemish, 1537–1612); Gerard van Groeningen (Flemish).

The work and its context

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

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.

Object facts

• Title: The Seed Falling by the Wayside
• Date: 1574
• Creator attribution: Philip Galle (Flemish, 1537–1612); Gerard van Groeningen (Flemish)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2023.128.1

A detail from the museum

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

Collection credit

L. E. Holden Fund

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.