The Kingdom of Heaven is Like …

(five parables)

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

St. Matthew

HALS, Frans

1625

Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art

Odessa, Ukraine

The painting shows St. Matthew sitting at a desk reading with an angel at his elbow.^[1] This painting was documented in the 18th-century but was considered lost until the 1950s, when two tronies were discovered languishing in the storerooms of the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art in 1958 by art historian Irina Linnik. At the time they were considered to be by unknown 19th-century painters, but Linnik recognized them as the work of a 17th-century master and eventually traced their history back to the 17th century, identifying them as two of four lost paintings by Hals of the evangelists, namely Luke and Matthew.^[2][3] After her work was published in 1959, the two paintings were included in the 1962 Frans Hals exhibition in the Frans Hals Museum. The international attention helped to spur art detectives and eventually the other two of John and Mark were also rediscovered.

In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition, Slive included a photo of Hals' Two singing boys with a lute and a music book to show that his theme of a main subject with a secondary witness was common to many of Hals' paintings of the 1620s and the models as secondary witness in these two paintings were clearly cousins.^[4]

The four evangelists by Hals: