Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych

The pedlar is on the outside in the truest sense: he is outside the Christian fellowship of the central panel and not yet close to the Salvation, or at least not as close as are the guests at the Wedding at Cana. He is, nevertheless, a repentant sinner. (p. 192)

Fischer, 2016

Jheronimus Bosch

#329

The Axiology and Ideology of Jheronimus Bosch

Following another tradition, the poor, wandering itinerant, who likewise a social outcast, is also – as presented on the outside of The Haywain [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515] or on the Rotterdam Pedlar – a metaphor for the good, repentant sinner… Bosch was absorbed with the notion of standing ‘out-side society’. He regarded it as an extraordinary position, either for better or for worse. To Bosch, life in the fringes was folly, negative in the case of riffraff but positive in the case of the ‘fools in God’, the hermits he depicted as holy ascetics in the Byzantine tradition – and perhaps there was folly also in the ‘madness’ of the artist, madness sublimated in his fanciful creations. There is an intriguing paradox in Bosch’s view of mankind and society. He condemns outsiders on the one hand but also praises and promotes a ‘sublimated’ marginality under the character of the most austere, ‘extremist’ anchorites from early Christianity, who are seen as self-maintaining (not dependent upon others, unlike beggars), wise, virtuous, ascetic and courageous against the devil’s violence and sexual assaults. The constant presence of threats in Bosch’s worldview goes some way to explaining the contradiction: the moral and spiritual integrity of the individual was liable to attack by his own impulses, rooted in sensuality, by the external world and by supernatural forces of evil. Fear both of material ruin and of spiritual damage was a basic element of bourgeois culture around 1500. The ideal of utilitarian wisdom became an obsession with self-preservation. The self was regarded as an extremely weak entity, constantly obliged to resist and remain firm. Hence the admiration for stern anchorites who were strong, courageous and self-contained. (p. 98-99)

Vandenbroeck, 2017

#335

The Axiology and Ideology of Jheronimus Bosch

The pedlar is an exceptional figure in Bosch’s oeuvre. Whereas with Bosch almost all poor people are good-for-nothings, he is a good man. He is a poor vagrant (with ragged clothing), but he is repentant: at the end of his life (his hair is white) he looks back, as if to judge his own life path. He sees robbery and revelry, and the punishment of crime (reverse of The Haywain [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515, “The Haywain Triptych”]); in the Rotterdam version, he leaves sinful lust (the brothel) and is about to open a gate towards better times. In his oeuvre, the pedlar is the only good common man, the only secular moral example, witness to another paradox in Bosch: in his view the popular classes consist of sinners and fools, but at the same time his most striking exemplary moral figure is a poor vagabond. (pp. 99-100)

Vandenbroeck, 2017

#348

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

The Pedlar has sometimes been seen as a portrayal of the Prodigal Son [Glück, 1904; de Tolnay, 1937; Baldass, 1943], but the protagonist’s advanced age rules out this reading. Still, it is quite possible that some contemporaries were prompted by the sight of the brothel and the pigs to recall that parable; perhaps this was even the artist’s intention. After all, in the biblical story the son squanders his inheritance among the harlots and subsequently becomes a swineherd. The question of whether the pedlar eventually repents, as the Prodigal Son did, is left unanswered… For the interpretation of this work, the back of The Haywain Triptych [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515] is of great importance… The question is whether the inner sides of the panels of the present dismembered triptych carried a similar message. (p. 294)

Lammertse, 2017

#360

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The composition recalls illustrations in the Ars moriendi manuals – popular in Bosch’s day- which taught readers the art of dying. A typical illustration in such a book presented a man on his deathbed, with a devil tempting him into choosing material things and an angel pointing out that there is still time to repent and that the dying man’s eternal salvation is much more important than his worldly goods. The Washington panel can be compared to the depiction of a dying man with both a devil and an angel sitting on the headboard of his bed on The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510; Hand & Wolff, 1986; Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015, 62; Ilsink et al., 2016, 212-215]. (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#397

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

There is only one instance in which Bosch shows an ordinary person ‘walking the straight path’ as the principal theme of a painting. There are two autograph versions of the Pedlar, one on the outside of the Hay Wain Triptych [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515], the other on the Rotterdam panel… The other Pedlar in Rotterdam is similar to the one in the Hay Wain in many respects, although his gaze is sterner and his hair is greying rather than white already. He has just passed a rundown brothel and is about to open a gate that bars his way. A magpie sits on the lowest bar of the gate, which stands next to a tree, with an owl perching on a bare branch. The bird stares at a great titmouse in the branches below. (pp. 183-184)

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#417

Hanging birdcage from The Pedlar

Het schilderij van Bosch wordt geacht het oogenblik voor te stellen, waarop de zondaar, tot inkeer gekomen, het huis, dat het tooneel zijner zonde geweest is, verlaat. Met zijn mand op den rug uitgedoscht als marskramer [Holbein, ca. 1523 – 1525; van Leyden, ca. 1520-1530], draagt hij allerlei kenteekenen, die aan zijn verblijf in het huis der vreugden herinneren. (p. 78)

Enklaar, 1940

Uit Uilenspiegel’s kring

#607

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… Bosch borrowed the magpie symbol from a medieval world poem, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, to which the famous magpie paradigm serves as an introduction [von Eschenbach, ca. 1200-1210]. For him the black-and-white magpie colors stand for zwivel (doubt), not in the present-day sense of vacillating faith or conscience but in the original sense of “zwie-fall” (duality), i.e., the fundamentally given polarity of cosmic, moral, and metaphysical powers. (p. 260)

Bird on wooden gate or fence from The Pedlar

#608

Small bird on tree from The Pedlar

#609

Tree with owl and small bird from The Pedlar

#612

…the tree of life, is developed just as richly and appealingly as the magpie symbol. A neighborly tree stands beside the homecomer, linked with him by the basic color of its trunk. It is a beech tree. The language of the late Middle Ages liked to treat this tree, like the elder and the hazel, as a woman, especially since it is one of the trees that possesses the power of the tree oracle. The casting. sticks used for divining one’s lot in life were made from its wood. Its maternal, destiny-divining qualities make the beech an obvious choice for the tree of life… According to popular belief in sympathetic influences, the tree of life to which a child is dedicated shares his fate, be it to grow and thrive or to fall sick and die. The beech in our picture has fallen sick as a result of the vagaries of its protege: exactly level with his heart it has developed a cancerous growth. But now that the Prodigal has repented, the excrescences recede. Rejuvenated, the tree rises to a fork. One branch, in danger of withering, forks toward the evil side, a sound one toward the good. From the withered branch the owl scolds. Its warning is not directed to the reprobate alone but to another happy-go-lucky bird too: the daring titmouse feeding on the beechmast – upside down like the Prodigal’s way of life. (p. 260)

#614

To make the meaning of the crux of his meditational picture as clear as possible, Bosch has indicated the exact moment in time when the spiritual event occurs. From the front opening of the man’s coat, in a strongly accented vertical, hanged a white string. The pig’s foot was tied to this string. But as the repentant Prodigal hunches forward to jerk himself free once and for all from his corrupt ways, the tie to the “swine within” breaks and he drops the emblem of evil pursuits – which jauntily continue in the open doorway across the road, where the soldier and pot girl meet. (pp. 260-265)

#650

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

The fact that Bosch chose not to depict the traveller as a pilgrim does not mean he is not one, but it does make the figure less clear-cut. It is understandable, therefore, that this wayfarer has also been variously described in the art-historical literature as the ‘Prodigal Son’, the ‘Pedlar’ and ‘Everyman’. The theme of the repentant sinner and that of the Prodigal Son do not rule one another out, though – one is the extension of the other. The detail with the pigs at a trough in front of the inn towards which the wayfarer looks back is so striking that it is hard to believe a viewer in Bosch’s time could have seen it without immediately thinking of the familiar parable [de Bruyn, 2001, 165–97; English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Luke, 15:11-32]. The fact that the man has a pack on his back argues against his identification as the Prodigal Son, but it does not make him a pedlar either, which is why the more neutral term ‘wayfarer’ has been used here [Schreiber, 1926, 32-33, no. 820-825]. (p. 320)

Ilsink et al., 2016

#652

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

Homo viator, the travelling man, might be an even more neutral and universal description for him. Calling the wayfarer ‘Everyman’ would also seem apt, with the proviso that – like ‘Prodigal Son’ – it risks reducing the figure to the illustration of a text [Zupnick, 1968]. As an ‘everyman’ with a lower-case ‘e’, by contrast, he makes this painting a mirror, just as the Everyman text itself does. The full title of Elckerlijc – in translation of the Middle Dutch version of Everyman – reads: ‘The Mirror of Everyman’s Salvation. How every man is summoned to give reckoning to God.’ Text and painting are linked by the notion that at the end of each human life, a balance sheet must be drawn up and an accounting given to God. However, where Everyman/Elckerlijc is a morality tale with an extremely clear progression from sin and repentance to salvation, the situation in Bosch remains unspecified. The outcome of the wayfarer’s life is unclear; we cannot say with any certainty whether he has truly repented. It looks like he is passing an inn with loose women. This gives the impression that he is leaving that world behind him, yet it is far from obvious where he is headed [ Lammertse, 1994, 95]. What is plain is that life’s road is beset with temptations and dangers, and that it does not leave those who travel it unscathed. (p. 320)

Ilsink et al., 2016

#858

The more specific identity of this figure as a peddler can be determined by observing that he carries a rncksack for his goods [Renger, 1969; de Bruyn, 2001 (Hieronymous Bosch’s So-Called Prodigal Son Tondo); de Bruyn, 2001]. His poverty is obvious from his scruffy costume with holes in the knee and from his bandaged leg with unmatched footwear. But he does have a small coin purse with a knife at his waist. He passes by a country inn that obviously doubles as a brothel, as the caged bird under the cave makes explicit… Earlier scholars attempted to interpret the main figure as the Prodigal Son of the gospel parable [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Luke, 15:11-32], who is reduced to repentant poverty by wine, women, and song in taverns, and forced to dwell among swine. But this figure is grey-haired rather than youthful, and there is no reason in the parable for him to carry a peddler’s pack, either before he squanders his patrimony or afterwards. (p. 254)

#872

Even as he withdraws from the setting of the tavern-brothel, he advances toward open countryside, which extends beyond a closed gate. Bosch again relies upon the viewer’s habit of reading from left to right to show me forward direction of the figure, even as he looks backward to temptation. De Bruyn wants to view him as a positive figure, repentant in me face of temptation, even while he carries me vestiges (bandage, cat skin, spoon) of former excesses [de Bruyn, 2001 (Hieronymous Bosch’s So-Called Prodigal Son Tondo), 137-139]. He sees the look on this wizened face as contrite rather than as wavering in the face of temptation. (pp. 256-259)

Wooden gate with ox and bird from The Pedlar

#873

…it is possible to see the gate as a marker of transition, even of transformative change, but visible beyond it are gallows, a form of earthly punishment for sins. (p. 259)

#884

Bosch’s Peddler shows a repentant sinner, who carries the scars of his former transgressions (bandage, cat skin) and still looks vulnerable to temptation, but who also seems to be attempting to rake a new path in his life. To the extent that Christian doctrine teaches that all humans are sinners, he could be understood as an allegory for Everyman on his pilgrimage of life. Yet his specifics of lower-class identity and poverty, of express sinfulness in a shabby tavern-brothel, can hardly be taken to be the measure of the middle-class (still less the elite) viewing audience for Bosch’s works. We also need to remember that this image of the Peddler formed the exterior of those two other Bosch wings, the Washington Usurer and the Paris-New Haven scenes of luxuria [Bosch, ca. 1475-1500; Bosch, ca. 1495–1500; Bosch, ca. 1485-1490]. In this context, the Rotterdam Peddler can be understood as a lesser version of those same activities – financial gain and pleasure-seeking-and a call (like the image of the angel in the Washington panel) toward reform… Virtually the same character of a thin, wandering old man in shabby clothes also appears on the exterior of one of Bosch’s most significant morality triptychs, the Haywain triptych [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515]… (pp. 259-260)