Pope Leo XIV called Vincent van Gogh’s “Sower at Sunset” (1888) in his first general public on Wednesday 21 May, using the painting to illustrate his reflections on the Biblical Sower. The pope ruminated the work of the Dutch post-impressionist painter while spoke with a crowd of about 40,000 people on the Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican, where he also called to put an end to Israel’s ”heartbreaking“Attacks on Gaza.
The pope brought the parable Van Gogh’s golden hour composition of a superized sun that undergoes over a field of wheat while a farmer sows seed closer to the foreground.
“And it strikes me that Van Gogh, behind the sower, already figured the grain ripe,” the Pope told his audience, referring to the lush crop that is depicted by the defined, impasto brush strokes of the artist. “It seems to me a picture of hope: somehow the seed has worn fruit.”
The parable of the sower is introduced in the gospel of Matthew of the New Testament, which Jesus describes that Jesus tells a crowd of people a story in which a farmer sows his seeds about different areas without distinction. Some seeds fall on paths to be eaten by birds; Others fall quickly between rocks and grow, only to burn and wilt with excess sunlight and no place to root; And finally, the seeds that land under thorns grow to suffocate the other plants. Only the seeds that nestle in good ground can spread.
Jesus explains to his disciples that the seeds chosen by birds are the same when someone gets the message about the kingdom of heaven and does not understand: “The angry gets away and takes away what was sown in their hearts.” The seeds that die so quickly when they grow on the rocky terrain refer to the people who receive those messages with joy, but they leave when they are confronted with persecution. Those who fell within the thorns says Jesus: “Consult someone who hears the Word, but the worries of this life and the deception of wealth suffocate the word, making it infertile.”
But the premium that comes from the right ground refers to those who hear and understand the word.
During his address, the Pope also found meaning in various elements of Van Gogh’s composition – such as the offset positioning of the farmer, with The setting sun dominates the stage. Perhaps, the pope said, this function should “remind us that it is God who moves history, even if he sometimes seems absent or distant.”
The Supreme Pontifex was born Robert Prevost from Chicago and was appointed as the first North -American to held the role on 8 May, just a few weeks after the death of Pope Franciscus at the end of April. With the immense collection of historical and contemporary artworks and furniture from the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV has also been donated with the public legacy of Pope Francis of defending art, artists and accessibility for both.
