Life of Christ - Parables

Parables

Of the thirty or so parables of Jesus in the canonical Gospels, four were shown in medieval art almost to the exclusion of the others, but not normally mixed in with the narrative scenes of the Life. These were: the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Dives and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. The Labourers in the Vineyard also appear in Early Medieval works.

From the Renaissance the numbers shown widened slightly, and the three main scenes of the Prodigal Son – the high living, herding the pigs, and the return – became the clear favourites. Albrecht Dürer made a famous engraving of the Prodigal Son amongst the pigs (1496), a popular subject in the Northern Renaissance, and Rembrandt depicted the story several times, although in at least one of his works, The Prodigal Son in the Tavern, a portrait of himself "as" the Son, revelling with his wife, is like many artists' depictions, a way of dignifying a genre tavern scene. His late Return of the Prodigal Son (1662, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) is one of his most popular works.