Plowing

Ligabue instills new liveliness in a traditional subject by enriching the scene with details of a tasty narrative nature. A running dog on the right shows the oxen bent under the weight of the plow which way to follow, while a man in rolled-up shirt sleeves greets the farmer at work and a group of hens peck on the left. In the background, a man in a carriage drawn by a horse refers to a very frequent subject in his third period, while the Nordic village in the background, obsessively recurring in the works of these years, represents the nostalgic memory of his childhood in Switzerland.