Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych – Detail

He leaves behind him a scene of ruin and neglect, the Swan tavern in which his mates disport themselves with wenches (p. 108)

… a house of prostitution (p. 85)

Dans I’encadrement de la porte, Scène décevante de frivolité, un soldat de passage, un traînard isolé lutine une pauvre servante de I’Auberge du Cygne. Par le monde entier, l’Enfant a vu l’horrible séduction, I’innocence toujours condamnée. Si au cours de ses voyages pédestres il est devenu poète et philosophe, Bosch nous montre qu’il n’y a pas perdu les sentiments qui se groupent entre et avec la pitié et la charité. Peut-être le soudard aura-t-il moins de scrupules parce que la maison est pauvre, ou qu’elle est de celles où depuis Iongtemps l’innocence est inconnue. Le toit est défoncé, les carreaux cassés, un volet détaché de ses gonds. Un homme, qui connaît le désordre de la place, s’est à peine éloigné pour satisfaire un besoin naturel. A deux pas de la porte, une truie et ses porcelets vident une auge, ‘ deux poules picorent sur un tas d’ordures. (p. 5)

… a brothel in a dilapidated house (p. 191)

By around 1500 the motif and theme of the evil inn, encountered repeatedly in the late Middle Ages, had condensed into a symbol of all that was bad for the civic elite and the aristocracy… The evil inn motif is also found in… the Pedlar… (p. 114)

The caged magpie, the jug on the stick al the top of the roof, the dovecote and the sign with a swan are all clues – one by itself would suffice, but taken altogether they leave no room for doubt – that this is a brothel. A woman standing in the doorway is embraced by a soldier or Landsknecht, of the type who featured in the visual art of this period as regular visitors to this kind of establishment [Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015, 118-122, 141-144]. His gigantic pike – they could be up to five or six metres long – stands against the façade. (p. 294)

The bird cage also occurs in brothel scenes depicted by Jan Sanders van Hemessen and the Brunswick Monogrammist (see Lammertse and van der Coelen [Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015, 143, 159]; the jug on a stick and the dovecote can be interpreted as symbols of copulation [Bax, 1949; de Bruyn, 2001]; in a painting of ca. 1480 by an anonymous Brussels artist, a sign with a swan hangs outside a brothel to which Saint Lucy is being led [Bücken & Steyaert, 2013, 277]. (p. 301, note 11)

A soldier who has leaned his over long lance against the wall fondles a woman in the doorway. (p.56)

… in the tavern at the left, whose ruinous condition echoes the ragged clothes of the wayfarer. As in Bosch earlier Marriage Feast at Cana [Follower of Jheronimus Bosch, ca. 1560], the tavern symbolizes the World and the Devil in general, its dubious nature revealed by man urinating at the night at the right, and by the couple embracing in the doorway. Another inmate of the house peers curiously through one of the dilapidated windows. (p. 104)

… in the tavern at the left, whose ruinous condition echoes the ragged clothes of the wayfarer. As in Bosch earlier Marriage Feast at Cana [Follower of Jheronimus Bosch, ca. 1560], the tavern symbolizes the World and the Devil in general, its dubious nature revealed by man urinating at the night at the right, and by the couple embracing in the doorway. Another inmate of the house peers curiously through one of the dilapidated windows. (p. 63)

The inn which he [the peddler] finds so tempting is obviously a place of sin and corruption. Its swan signboard, its pigeons in the loft, its jug, and its women all show that it is a house of prostitution. It also a place of drunkenness and intoxication. Symbols of drink include the leaking barrel and the man who urinates at the side of the wall. Bosch’s inn can be interpreted as a conventional Christian image of temptation, but it corresponds even more closely with a metaphor in the Manichean-related Hymn of the Pearl. In this poem, the Saviour who has come to rescue the fallen soul goes to stay in a similar inn. Symbolically, this is a temporary dwelling, which represents the earth [Jonas, 1963, 55f.]. Like the tavern/brothel in the painting at Rotterdam, it is a place where corruption and drunkenness are rife. (pp. 163-164)

The left side-scene shows a disreputable house, its roof pitched at an awkward angle. The collapsing ridgepole, broken window panes, and sagging shutter, and the washing hung out to dry at the attic window make this sinister tavern a symbol of neglect and squalor. The blackness framed by the door and windows represents the murky background of the love affairs in the fugitive’s libertine past. (p. 258)

We see it first in a cage outside the sinister house, representing the hero’s past entanglement in the evil world. In those days a birdcage hanging at the door was the sign of a brothel. (p. 260)

On the left side of the painting three figure representations are shown in and around the tavern: an amorous couple in the frame of the door, a girl looking out of a window with a mirror beside her, hanging inside the room on the window-post and, to the right of the building, a man relieving himself in a dark corner. All three are depicted on the same scale and they all occur on the same level and in the same section of the painting. This makes the three representations appear as elements of the same value and suggests that they may belong together… The print after Pieter Bruegel’s Triumph of Time [Bruegel, 1574] may help us with the interpretation of these three details… (p. 17)

Even the evil inn at the left is prophetically marked with small gallows. It is the framework of this building which forms such images. The place of sins carries symbols of the future punishment. (p. 72:note 153)

In the background of the Rotterdam tondo there is a dilapidated building that is clearly a tavern and brothel. A jug is propped on a stick at the peak of the roof, a sign hanging to the side has a swan on it, and there is a magpie in a cage next to the door [Bax, 1949, 94, 222]. Within the doorway a man embraces a woman and a man urinates at the side of the building. Next to the main figure there is a tree with an owl and a magpie perched in it [Janson, 1952, 178; Rosenberg, 1961]. (p. 93)

… when figures in Northern European art are shown in front of taverns, they are usually associated with the kind of activities that take place within them [Tuttle, 1981, 93: note 47; Bosch, ca. 1505-1510; Bosch, ca. 1504-1508; de Tolnay, 1966, 174; Bosch, ca. 1500; Bosch, ca. 1490-1500; Beham, 1535]. One’s suspicion that the Rotterdam poor man was a frequenter of taverns and brothels is increased by the other changes that Bosch made in the painting. The precise symbolic meaning of some of these details may be irretrievably lost in forgotten folk proverbs and jokes, but some observations can nonetheless be made about them, with varying degrees of certainty. (p. 93)

In the section depicting Ira in Bosch’s Seven Deadly Sins tabletop [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510], there is a tavern behind the scene of the men fighting. There is a demonic tavern in the center panel of the Vienna Last Judgment [Bosch, ca. 1504-1508; de Tolnay, 1966, 174] with gluttons and drunkards around it and lechers on the roof. There are also taverns, with lechers on the roofs, in the Bruges Last Judgment and in the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights [Bosch, ca. 1500; Bosch, ca. 1490-1500]. In the Bruges painting sinners who were apparently guilty of excessive drinking are gathered around a barrel in front of the tavern. A similar tavern that is in even worse condition than that of the Rotterdam tondo appears in the background of a scene of revelry in a 16th-century woodcut by Sebald Beham [Beham, 1535]. (p. 93:note 47)

Guarded by a watchdog, the inn reveals a couple kissing in the doorway and a man urinating in the corner outdoors. Men’s pants hang out a second-story window. (p. 254)

The tavern-bothel… remains an unequivocally negative location… (p. 256)