{
"data": {
"id": 170221,
"accession_number": "2012.4",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Seed Received among the Thorns, from the Parable of the Sower, c. 1573. Gerard P. van Groningen (Netherlandish, active late 1500s). 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.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2012.4",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Seed Received among the Thorns, from the Parable of the Sower",
"creation_date": "c. 1573",
"creation_date_earliest": 1568,
"creation_date_latest": 1578,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Belgium, Flanders, Antwerp, 16th century"
],
"technique": "Black chalk, gray wash, and brown ink, on cream laid paper; traces of transfer",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "cream laid paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - Flemish",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 19.7 x 25.5 cm (7 3/4 x 10 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.197,
"height_inch": 7,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"width": 0.255,
"width_inch": 10,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "inscribed lower right in brown ink: \"avarita\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 440585,
"title": "Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel",
"description": "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).",
"opening_date": "2022-10-09T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Private Collection, New York, NY",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-2011",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "sold, Doyle New York, October 26, 2011, sale 11CN03, Lot 24 [as Flemish School]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2011",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "with Christopher Bishop Fine Art, Milford, CT",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2011-2012",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2012-",
"sortorder": 4
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [
{
"id": 170488,
"description": "The Parable of the Sower and the Seed: The Seed Falling by the Way Side (after Gerard Van Groeningen, active Antwerp 1563-1573), 1574. After Gerard van Groeningen (Flemish), Philip Galle (Flemish, 1537\u20131612). Engraving; sheet: 21.3 x 25.6 cm (8 3/8 x 10 1/16 in.); matted: 37.9 x 50.6 cm (14 15/16 x 19 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Christopher Bishop, 2012.80",
"relationship": null
}
],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"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\u2014Cares 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\u2019s moral discourse.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80078591"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2012.4-the-seed-received-am"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Christopher Bishop Fine Art. Master Drawings Catalog 2014. Milford, CT: Christopher Bishop Fine Art, 2014. p. 61.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 61",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Hautekeete, Stefaan, ed. From Floris to Rubens: Master Drawings from a Belgian Private Collection. Ghent: Snoeck, 2016. p. 79 (entry by Stijn Alsteens).",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 79, fig. 1.",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "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.",
"page_number": "p. 107",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/43705939."
},
{
"citation": "Peters, Emily J., Laura Ritter, William Griswold, Klaus Albrecht Schro\u0308der, and Koenraad Jonckheere. Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel. Cleveland, OH : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 249-250, no. 78",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2012.4",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2012.4/2012.4_web.jpg",
"width": "1156",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "280068",
"filename": "2012.4_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2012.4/2012.4_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2627",
"filesize": "2283021",
"filename": "2012.4_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2012.4/2012.4_full.tif",
"width": "6232",
"height": "4816",
"filesize": "90063964",
"filename": "2012.4_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 170221,
"creators": [
{
"id": 710393,
"description": "Gerard P. van Groningen (Netherlandish, active late 1500s)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2012-03-05T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1568,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1573",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-06-10 19:49:01.628000"
}
}