Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych – Detail

Wat de ekster op het hek wil zeggen, ontgaat mij, als men niet de beteekenis eraan hechten mag van het rijmpje: de ekster heeft een schoone taal, maar uw geldje nam het altemaal 3); wat mij toch niet waarschijnlijk voorkomt. (p. 84)

The dual nature of the Hearer, which contains both darkness and light, is also symbolized by the black and white plumage of the two magpies in the painting. One of these is trapped in a cage next to the door of the inn, and the other stands on a bar of the gate in front of the peddler. (p. 164)

It represents the spiritual conversion of the Prodigal, and is therefore to be regarded as his soul-bird. 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. Then the bird escapes and, like the birds that so often show people the way in fairy tales, flutters ahead of the fugitive and perches on the bottom bar of the gate-the direction his feet must take. Finally it soars to the top of a high pole from where it can see his father’s house rising out of the trees. (p. 260)

… the creation of man, who is represented by the piebald magpie standing for the Son of Adam facing the choice between black and white, Hell and Heaven. (p. 265)

The gate shows one particular feature which is striking and unusal. It stands by itself without being connected to a fence. From a practical point of view it does not have the function of a gate at all. That Bosch represented the gate as being set up in the landscape as a single to have something to do with the symbolic meaning of object standing free in its surroundings it probably symbolizes something which stands by itself in the landscape. In order to find could be, we should look at the design of the gate in which we look at the particular type of puzzle-picture called Vexier-Bild. Then we see that the wooden parts of it form a perfect image of are, in fact, several little gallows hidden in the design of the gate. and one can see a picture of this ominous object almost any way one looks at it [Philip, 1958, 72:note 153]. The magpie sitting on the gate confirms this interpretation. One is reminded of Bruegel’s painting called The Magpie on the Gallows , which idea originally invented by Bosch [Philip, 1958, 72:note 154; Grossmann, 1955, fig.91, 153-154; Bruegel, 1565; Visscher, 1614; Brummel, 1949, 67]… The gate in the Peddler is indubitably meant to be the Gate of Death [Visscher, 1614], the gallows in disguise. In this painting the place of execution is not only represented as a small ground. The gallows appears as a large image in the foreground, idea of the end on the gallows is particularly stressed in part of the main action and is not shown as only a final distant future. (p. 72)

Yet on the gate itself a third bird is evident, the black-and-white magpie, frequently associated with babbling or gossip because of its loud voice. Pieter Bruegel features this very species resting atop a gallows before a gloriously verdant valley landscape in the 1568 Magpie on the Gallows (plate 196) [34]. (p. 259)