Blessed Are the Arable Hearts

A sower went out to sow. Thus begins the world, thus begins the Gospel, thus begins this painting…

The arm is flung forward, the hand opens, the seeds take flight to fall like a rain that makes the earth fruitful. And in this gesture lies the entire parable—the good soil and the harvest.

As far as the eye can see, the arable land unfolds. The earth is open, the land that the hand of man has freed from the stones, purged of brambles, torn from the curse like a promise about to be fulfilled. As far as the eye can see, here is the prepared land. Not the stony ground where the seeds burn, not the brambles where the young shoot is strangled, but that vast fertile field like a womb waiting to be made fruitful.

As far as the eye can see, Lord, here is this fallow land, the fruit of men’s labor. Land shaped by sweat, sanctified by it, land where every plowing is an act of faith, where every furrow opened is an act of hope, where the preparation of soil is an act of charity.

Now, Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) has placed us, the beholders of his work, in a position to become its actors: we are set so low, almost at ground level, that we ourselves become one of the furrows. Before this painting, we are part of the good soil that is about to be fertilized by the august gesture of the Sower. For this land, the fruit of human labor, is our heart. Our heart turned, broken, plowed, opened, offered: freed from the hardness of the stones, released from the grip of the brambles. Blessed are the arable hearts…

Millet painted a peasant sowing. He shows him to us from below: we look up to him, and this raises and exalts him. His silhouette is outlined by the light of the setting sun piercing through the clouds, a technique used in ancient bas-reliefs to designate men of providence. His gesture is broad, theatrical, arm outstretched: a movement that belongs more to the monuments raised in our public squares to honor great men than to simple narrative painting.  

The mystery of mysteries   

This monumentality bestowed by Millet upon his pictorial expression is not in vain: here the peasant sows as Abel the righteous sowed at the dawn of the world, and as Jesus of Nazareth sowed his word when the fullness of time had come.  Millet painted what he himself confessed: “The peasant at his work is like a priest at his Mass.” Then everything becomes clear: the step is a procession, the hand is a blessing, the land is an altar.  For to sow is to begin to accomplish the mystery wherein the grain, fallen into the earth, dies in order to live, is lost in order to multiply, disappears in order to rise again. Mystery of mysteries where God explains nothing, yet in the end accomplishes everything in us, for us.

Van Gogh considered Millet “the sower of modern art.” And indeed he was, for he showed that art needs neither gold nor marble nor grand style to be an expression of the sacred, but only a peasant advancing, an arm opening, a grain falling into the earth. He looked upon the humble man and in him discerned a man raised to the rank of the divine; he looked upon the earth and there discerned the table of the Last Supper; he looked upon labor and discerned a liturgy. He contemplated the earth and the work of men, and from plowing to harvest he discerned the history of salvation. And since then, every artist who seeks truth rather than appearance—a presence that speaks to the soul, rather than affectation that speaks to pride—sows in the furrow opened by Jean-François Millet, shepherd in his childhood, plowman in his adolescence, who before his easel became an expert in parables.

Pierre-Marie Dumont

The Sower (c. 1865), Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. © 2011 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute / photo Michael Agee.