Almost any mammal can be used as a symbol of Earth. Yet in Northern art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cattle are preferred function. In many of the engraved series represendng the the animal of terra is a bull or cow [insert examples]… they nevertheless show that there was a powerful tradition in for relating the cow or the bull to the idea of Earth… [”Terra, from Engelberg Crucifix”, ca. 1200]. Bosch could have found some additional material for this revival in the folklore of his time since the cow and the bull play an important part as symbols of the earth in the old mythological tradition of many nations, among them that of the Teutonic peoples [Philip, 1958, 12:note 29, 13:note 32, Beer, 1957, col. 1262f., 1266f.; Mannhardt, 1858, 37:note 6, 41]. In addition, taurus has always been regarded as one of the three earthly signs in the astrological tradition of the middle ages [Philip, 1958, 13:note 33; Gundel, 1922, 130-135; Eisler, 1946, 91f., 115f., 116: fig. 28; Strauss, 1926, 46:fig. 37]. Bosch must have been familiar with this idea since he certainly knew the popular publications on astrology: his cow, though she does not signify a zodiac sign in this context, is nevertheless modeled on the recumbent half-figure of the taurus com- mon in fifteenth- and sixteenth century astrological illustrations [Philip, 1958, 13:note 34; Eisler, 1946, 91f.; Strauss, 1926, 44:fig. 37, 54:fig. 49; Thiele, 1898, 70]… (pp. 12-13)
