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Wikimedia Commons · CC0 · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original fileA tattered young man leans on a staff in the center of a busy, crumbling farmyard. To his right, a woman kneels to milk a cow while goats and a large turkey occupy the foreground. In the background, ruined thatched buildings and distant figures tending swine illustrate the son's state of poverty and moral decline.
In the Western esoteric tradition, the Parable of the Prodigal Son was often interpreted as a Neoplatonic allegory for the soul's descent into the material world and its eventual return to the divine. The ruined architecture and presence of swine symbolize the degradation of the spirit when it is consumed by base physical appetites.
Luke 15:11–32
The primary biblical source for the narrative of the Prodigal Son.
Marsilio Ficino
Ficino and other Neoplatonists used the motif of the 'returning son' to describe the soul's ascent (epistrophe) back to the One.
Object
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Engraving
religious
Digital Source
Wikimedia Commons · CC0
http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.337732
Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication
7696 × 5308 px
68f8646575db773d3b4f032f33522ce98e5051f8
December 3, 2019
March 23, 2026
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3-flash-preview on April 1, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.