What it says about Leo Van Gogh’s painting corresponds to many of the ideas the new pope expressed in the first days of his papacy. Leo observed: “In the center of the painting is the sun, not ...

He noted that “behind the sower, van Gogh painted the grain already ripe,” and Leo called it an image of hope which shows that somehow the seed has borne fruit.

Van Gogh’s painting was inspired by French artist Jean-Francois Millet’s 1860 painting. But he transformed Millet’s composition into an image of hope.

Other artists, including the Norwegian Emanuel Vigeland, explicitly depicted the Parable of the Sower. Vigeland’s series of stained-glass windows in an Oslo church explains each passage’s meaning.

In his first general audience in Rome, Pope Leo XIV referred to Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Sower at Sunset” and called it a symbol of hope. A brilliant setting sun illuminates a field as a farmer ...

Leo referred to Christ’s Parable of the Sower, a story in the Gospel that speaks to the need to do good works. “Every word of the Gospel is like a seed sown in the soil of our lives,” he ...