The Prodigal Son

Dürer · c. 1496
The Cleveland Museum of Art

One of Dürer’s early engravings, made in Nuremberg around 1496.

The younger son kneels among the pigs in a farmyard, his hands clasped and his face turned up. Around him jostle hogs and piglets at a trough, and behind stand the steep roofs and barns of a German village.

From the text

Sent “into his fields to feed the pigs” (Luke 15:15)

He longed to eat the pods the pigs were eating (Luke 15:16)

“Finally he came to his senses” (Luke 15:17)

The artist’s own

The distant country as a farmyard of Dürer’s Franconia

A trough, a tub and a cart wheel

Details

The son

Kneeling, hands clasped, he looks up to the sky.

The pigs

Big hogs crowd round the trough, piglets underneath.

The tub

Piglets drink from a wooden tub.

The village

Half-timbered houses and barns with steep roofs.

Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., 1958.105) · Engraving · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).

The verses

Luke 15:13–19After a few days, the younger son got everything together and journeyed to a distant country, where he squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent all he had, a severe famine swept through that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. He longed to fill his belly with the pods the pigs were eating, but no one would give him a thing. Finally he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have plenty of food? But here I am, starving to death! I will get up and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’