Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych – Detail

Een kattevel zal wel meer door rondzwervende marskramers meegevoerd zijn, die, als het zoo voorkwam, van kattenmeppen een bijverdienste maakten; maar ook herinnert het aan het leven, waarin de zondaar verkeerd heeft: een oude katsjager is een aanbidder van het schoone geslacht in ongunstigen zin [Harrebomée, 1870, 238]; dat past voortreffelijk bij dezen man. (p. 78)

The cat’s skin, too, carries a double meaning. Up to now it has been taken for a “remedy for rheumatism” [Hannema, 1931] or a “bringer of bad luck” [de Tolnay, 1937, 46]. This trophy of an itinerant small-game hunter and knockeroff of cats has a sexual connotation that led Michael Lindener to choose the highly suggestive title “Katzipori” (derived from the Italian cazzo) for the collection of “droll stories” that followed his Rastbüchlein [Lindener, 1558]. (p. 259)

The meaning of the catskin hanging on the poor man’s basket is more enigmatic. However, some popular association between dead cats and dissipation may be suggested by the appearance of another dead cat in the Basel tondo of the Prodigal Son in poverty. This popular association may have been current in Italy as well. Condivi’s explanation of the panther skin that Michelangelo’s figure of Bacchus holds states that the cat is dead because it is meant to symbolize the fatal consequences of dissolute living [Condivi, 1927, 28]. (p. 95)

The presence on his pack of a prominent large spoon (or ladle) of self-indulgence as well as a cat skin ensures that this peddler is neither without desires nor an innocent [Silver, 2006, 410-411:note 30; Bax, 1979, 216-217; Zupnick, 1968, 115-132; Renger, 1970, 129-142; Bruegel, 1568 (Les Mendiants ou Les Culs-de-jatte); Tóth-Ubbens, 1987, 73-76]. For example, a cat stealing a squab from a plate appears prominently within the painting of a brothel by Jan van Hemessen [van Hemessen, 1543], in which another older traveler, still wearing his hat, is being accosted, despite his feeble resistance, by a group of young harlots as well as an old bawd; meanwhile a dog crouches beneath the table. The cat, then, should be construed as an image of these loose women, and 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). Hemessen’s image… offers the equivalent of an interior view of the tavern-brothel of Bosch’s background, complete with drink and women plus tavern cats and dogs.(p. 256-257)

Zupnick notes the variety of associations with cats, though they are often gendered as feminine and associated with the night, so there may well be erotic and sinful connotations implied by this item [Zupnick, 1968, 115-13]… One can compare this trophy to a foxtail, worn by beggars in Bruegel’s Cripples [Bruegel, 1568 (Les Mendiants ou Les Culs-de-jatte)] and also frcquentiy the marker of lepers in an urban context, but it also – like most qualities of beggars – carries negative connotations of deceit, specifically malingering… Magdi Tóth-Ubbens… calling foxtails “symbols of evil, slyness and cunning” [Tóth-Ubbens, 1987, 73-76]. (pp. 410-411: no. 30)

Eddy de Jongh… noting that “the cat is a well-known symbol of lust and functions as such in numerous erotic scenes” (p. 411:note 31)