Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych – Detail

The wanderer’s bandaged leg left leg is also significant from the Cathar point of view. It indicates that he is wounded…. the wound means that he is subject to sin, and its location on the left foot or leg identifies his sin as lust. The wayfarer is not shown as undeemably wicked, however. (p. 165)

…the torn trouser knee and the roughly bandaged shin show that at his last stop this vagabond must have taken a sudden tumble down the stairs (p. 259)

But an even more incisive mark of the Prodigal’s inner turnaround is his gait: a loose-kneed falling forward, a shuffle in which the soles of the feet barely leave the ground, a limp sagging at the knees as though an insupportable burden were crushing him as he staggers on his way. This expressive movement, characteristic of Bosch, has the effect of a definition, which, like Seneca’s “errare humanum est” or the Demosthenian “it is only the gods who never err,” sees human journeying as endless stumbling; God’s steadfastness alone offers a firm footing. We recall the words of the Psalmist: “My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O Lord, held me up” [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Psalm, 94:18]. Does not the puppetlike movement of the Prodigal’s limbs suggest that he is being drawn along by a higher hand? [Fraenger, 1999, 431, note 104; Baldass, 1943, 232; Bax, 1948] (p. 259)

The sore on the man’s leg is a symptom of an affliction that has stricken several characters in Bosch’s works. These characters are often associated with taverns and brothels. The Tree-Man in the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights, for example, has a bandaged carbuncle on his leg [Bosch, ca. 1490-1500; de Tolnay, 1966, 240]…. A similarly stricken figure, whose body seems to serve the same function as the Tree-Man’s, can be seen in the left panel of Bosch’s Saint Anthony triptych [Bosch, ca. 1500 (Temptations of St. Anthony)]… The man who empties the contents of a jug into his mouth in the illustration of Gluttony on Bosch’s Seven Deadly Sins tabletop also has a bandaged sore on his ankle [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510; de Tolnay, 1966, 66]. (p. 93-94)

The best-known character in a Bosch painting to suffer from such a sore is the sinister man who stands in the doorway of the shed in the Prado Epiphany, a figure who has been identified as the Anti-Christ or the Jewish Messiah [Bosch, ca. 1494 (Triptych of Adoration of the Magi); de Tolnay, 1966, 297; Philip, 1953, 267-293]. Lotte Brand Philip and Ludwig von Baldass have diagnosed his ailment as leprosy [Philip, 1953, 268; Baldass, 1943, 40]. It was appropriate for Bosch to have represented this character as a leper because, as Philip has shown, medieval legends described the Jewish Messiah as a leper [Philip, 1953, 268]. Furthermore, the Middle Ages commonly believed that leprosy occurred as divine punishment for sin, particularly the sin of heresy or unbelief [Brody, 1974, 115-117, 149-159]. The Anti-Christ would, of course, be the archetype of this type of sinner. Saul Brody has suggested that the connection between leprosy and heresy may be based on one of the curses in Deuteronomy to which Israel would be subject if she failed to keep God’s commandments: “May the Lord strike thee with a very sore ulcer in the knees and in the legs.” [Brody, 1974, 124-125:note 27; English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Deuteronomy, 28:35] But he then goes on to show that leprosy was associated with lust even more closely than with heresy [Brody, 1974, 117-118, 129-132, 143-146, 173-189]. The connection between carnality and leprosy was unanimously accepted in religious, medical, and popular theories: “for what is the impurity of leprosy, unless it is the sin of lust?” [Brody, 1974, 129]. Leprosy was believed to be a venereal disease that one was most likely to contract in brothels [Brody, 1974, 52-58, 143, 177-179]. This belief was so ubiquitous that Bosch’s apparent association of leprous sores with taverns and brothels seems quite unexceptional. The appearance of a sore on the leg of the man in the Rotterdam tondo reinforces our suspicion that he has been frequenting the house that is shown behind him. (p. 93-94)

The fact that the Rotterdam poor man has lost a shoe leads to the same conclusion. Drunkenness and consorting with prostitutes were condemned for being extravagant as well as sinful pastimes in the Middle Ages. They were denounced by moralists who formulated bleak descriptions of the consequences of such unseemly, immoderate activities [Owst, 1953, 425-441; Renger, 1970]. The loss of one’s clothing and particularly one’s shoes as a result of gambling and other forms of prodigality in the taverns was a familiar topos in such literature throughout the Middle Ages [Renger, 1970, 20; Tuttle, 1981, 94:note 60]. Popular texts that elaborated upon the parable of the Prodigal Son were convenient vehicles for the expression of these moralizations [Renger, 1970, 23-70]. One of the most poignant depictions of the Prodigal Son in poverty appears in a series of tondos, today in Basel, that illustrates the various episodes of the parable [Der verlorene Sohn beim Spiel im Freudenhaus, ca. 1520]. The Prodigal Son is shown in wretched poverty, seated before a meager fire. One of his shoes is missing. (p. 94)

De Bruyn associates the animal with the well-known, still-extant phrase “hellhound” and he further surmises that the bandage on the peddler’s leg is the sign of an earlier bite, a wound redolent of sin [de Bruyn, 2001 (Hieronymous Bosch’s So-Called Prodigal Son Tondo), 137-139]. (p. 256)

…wearing a cat skin could show (like the bandage on his leg) that the peddler has a past in the taverns as a “skirt chaser” or “cat hunter” (katsjager). (p. 257)