Parable of the Sower

Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted this Northern Renaissance landscape in 1557, one of his earliest signed works. A peasant scatters seeds in the foreground while Christ preaches to a crowd across the river. The biblical parable unfolds within an ambitious panoramic landscape stretching to distant mountains.

Bruegel had recently returned from Italy, where he sketched the Alps. That experience informed the dramatic vertical mountains and atmospheric perspective here. Every leaf in the foreground trees receives careful attention, yet the distant hills dissolve into soft haze. The painting belongs to just a handful of Bruegel works in North American museums. The Putnam Foundation acquired it in 1957 from a Belgian collection. The oil on wood panel measures 73.7 x 102.9 cm and hangs at the Timken Museum in San Diego.