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The Pilgrimage of Life
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Triptych of Haywain. The Wayfarer (detail)
1500-02
Oil on panel, 135 x 90 cm
Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial
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The »Haywain« and the »Garden of Earthly Delights« show
mankind trapped by its age-old enemies, the World, the Flesh
and the Devil. The precarious situation of the human soul in
this life was represented again, although in somewhat
different terms, on the outer panels of the »Haywain«
triptych. These panels are inferior in
quality to the rest of the triptych and were probably
completed by workshop assistants, but Bosch must have
designed the composition.
The foreground is dominated by an emaciated, shabbily
dressed man who is no longer young, carrying a wicker basket
strapped to his back; he travels through a menacing
landscape. A skull and several bones lie scattered at lower
left; an ugly cur snaps at his heels, while the footbridge
on which he is about to step appears very fragile indeed. In
the background, bandits have robbed another traveller and
are binding him to a tree, and peasants dance at the right
to the skirl of a bagpipe. A crowd of people gather around
an enormous gallows in the distance, not far from a tall
pole surmounted.by a wheel, used for displaying the bodies
of executed criminals.
A countryside similarly filled with violence can be seen
behind St James on the exterior of the Vienna »Last
Judgments serving to remind us that James was the patron
saint of pilgrims who invoked his protection against the
dangers of the road. In the Middle Ages, however, every man
was a pilgrim in a more spiritual sense. He was but a
stranger on earth, an exile searching for his lost homeland.
This poignant image of the human condition is almost as old
as Christianity itself, for St Peter had already described
Christians in similar terms, and these were repeated with
countless variations by later writers. The German mystic
Henry Suso, for example, saw men as »miserable beggars who
still wander so verry wretchedly in oursorrowfulexile«. In
Deguilleville's »Pilgrimageof the Lifeof Man«,the pilgrimage
is employed as a framework for the life and spiritual
temptations of a monk.
Bosch's pilgrim makes his way through the treacherous world
whose vicissitudes are represented in the landscape. Some of
the dangers are physical, such as the robbers or the
snarling dog, although the latter may also symbolize
detractors and slanderers, whose evil tongues were often
compared to barking dogs. The dancing peasants, however,
connote a moral danger; like the lovers on top of the
haywain, they have succumbed to the music of the flesh. In
expressing the spiritual predicament of all mankind, the
pilgrim thus resembles Everyman and his Dutch and German
counterparts Elckerlijc and Jedermann, whose spiritual
pilgrimages form the subjects of contemporary morality
plays.
In a circular painting now in Rotterdam,
Bosch reworked the figure of the Prado wayfarer a decade or
so later, this time placing him against one of his most
delicately conceived landscapes. The rolling sand dunes at
the right and the subdued tonalities of grey und yellow are
sensitive transcriptions into paint of the rain-drenched
Dutch countryside. There is little reason to believe, as
some scholars do, that the picture represents an episode
from the parable of the Prodigal Son. The large foreground
figure closely recalls the »Haywain« pilgrim, except that he
appears even more haggard and poorly dressed. There are,
however, some subtle differences. Except for the snarling
dog, with its possible allusion to slander, the dangers of
the world are here chiefly spiritual. They are embodied
first of all in the tavern at the left, whose ruinous
condition echoes the ragged clothes of the wayfarer. As in
Bosch's earlier »Marriage Feast at Cana«, the tavern
symbolizes the World and the Devil in general, its dubious
nature revealed by the man urinating at the right, and by
the couple embracing in the doorway. Another inmate of the
house peers curiously through one of the dilapidated
windows.
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The Wayfarer
Oil on panel, diameter 71,5 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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In the Late Middle Ages the course of a person's life
on Earth was understood to be a pilgrimage from birth to
death. The idea of the wayfarer was, therefore, of great
significance to the Christian life. Depictions of this
allegory were studied with great care for indications of
dangers and pitfalls, of what and what not to do in this
life. Bosch had treated the subject on the outside panels of
The Haywain, and the same pose with different
background messages is seen in this circular panel painted
about 10 years later. Set in one of Bosch's most delicate
and sensitively observed Dutch landscapes, the tattered
scarecrow figure is pausing as he passes a dilapidated
tavern. Possibly he is wondering if the woman gazing from
the broken shuttered window has the same interest in him as
the two 'lovers' in the doorway have in each other. The
sordid scene is emphasized by the peasant urinating on the
corner of the inn. The painting is different from The
Hayixam panels in showing only the spiritual and sensual
dangers that the wavfarer encounters.
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The Wayfarer. The House of the Ill Fame (detail)
Oil on panel
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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The customer for whom the second woman waits may very well
be the traveller himself. As Bax has perceptively observed,
he has not just emerged from the tavern, but has passed it
in his journey and now halts on the road, as if allured by
its promise of pleasure. Bax further suggests that the
garments of the traveller and the various articles he
carries are a symbolic commentary on his poverty, the sinful
tendencies which led to his present condition, and his
readiness to succumb to temptation once more. However this
may be, the spiritual state of the wayfarer is also conveyed
in less symbolic terms. Bosch has transformed the defensive
movement of the »Haywain« pilgrim into an attitude of
hesitation, while the wayfarer's head is turned towards the
tavern with an almost wistful expression.
In the Rotterdam panel Bosch does not make the moral
alternatives quite so explicit, but they can be discerned
nonetheless. If the wayfarer looks back in the direction of
the tavern, his path leads towards a gate and the tranquil
Dutch countryside beyond. Unlike the violencefilled
landscape of the »Haywain« wings, the background contains no
suspicious incidents, and, except for the owl perched on a
dead branch directly above the wayfarer's head, no overt
symbols of evil. We are probably justified in seeing in the
gate and fields a reference to Christ who, in John 10:9,
speaks of himself as the door through which those who enter
»shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture«.
In the »Haywain«, the pilgrim appears as a neutral figure,
neither good nor bad. In the Rotterdam panel, Bosch made the
image more profound by showing the pilgrim in the grip of a
spiritual crisis. But whether the pilgrim will turn away
from the tavern to pass through the gate is as doubtful as
the issue of the struggle between angel and devils in the »
Death of theMiser«.
This ambiguity of the Rotterdam »Wayfarer« exemplifies
perfectly the pessimism of Bosch's age concerning the human
condition. The same attitude predominates in a pair of small
panels, perhaps altar wings, also at Rotterdam. On the reverse, Bosch painted four little
monochrome scenes showing mankind beset by devils. They
possess a farm and
drive away the inhabitants, throw a ploughman from his horse
and fall upon an unwary traveller. In the fourth scene,
however, the Christian soul finds asylum: he kneels before
Christ while a companion, like the just souls described in
Revelation 6:11, receives a white robe from an angel.
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The Fall of the Rebel Angels
(obverse)
1500-04
Oil on panel, 69 x 35 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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Mankind Beset by Devils (reverse of Rebel
Angels panel) 1500-04
Oil on panel, diameter 32,4 cm (each) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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Two small panels that may have formed, or been
intended to form, the wings of an altarpiece, each carry a
full picture on one side: The Fall of the Rebel Angels and
Noah's Ark on Mount Araratt. On the reverse side are four
circular paintings showing scenes of people being beset by
devils during the mundane pursuit of their ordinary working
lives. In one, devils have driven a farmer from his farm; in
another, they have attacked a traveller; and in the one
illustrated here they have knocked a ploughman from his
horse. (In the fourth painting the Christian soul finds
asylum.) It epitomizes in many ways the medieval belief in
the real unseen existence of devils and demons everywhere.
For Bosch, who all evidence shows to have been a depressive,
morbid character, it is the simplest message of an
evcrpresent danger. Constant vigilance must accompany
everyone everywhere; devils are really ready to pounce. The
ploughman sees the devil or did he just fall off his horse?
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Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (obverse)
1500-04
Oil on panel, 69 x 38 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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Mankind Beset by Devils (reverse of Noah
panel)
1500-04
Oil on panel, diameter 32,4 cm (each)
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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It was during Bosch's lifetime that belief in devils reached
a new height. Erasmus could scoff at the demons of hell as
mere bogeymen and empty illusions, but most of Bosch's
contemporaries believed that devils actively and maliciously
intervened in human affairs, both directly and through their
agents, the witches and sorcerers. These beliefs were
codified in the infamous »Malleus Maleficarum«, or »Witches'
Hammer«, of Jacob Sprengerand Heinrich Kramer, published at
Nuremberg in 1494. In
scholastically precise terminology, the »Malleus Maleficarum«
examines the nature of witches and their relationships with
the Devil, as well as the means by which they were to be
recognized and punished.
This immensely popular book influenced a great many witch
trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and may
also have inspired the pictures on the obverse of the two
panels at Rotterdam just discussed. Here we see the Rebel
Angels, already transformed into monsters, tumbling into a
desolate landscape; and the landing of Noah's Ark on Mount
Ararat, from which animals descend by pairs among the
corpses of the drowned. These two curious scenes may allude
to a medieval interpretation of Genesis 6:1-6, describing
the corruption of the earth which resulted in the Flood. In
those days, we are told, the sons of God took to wife the
daughters of men who bore a mighty race of giants. The sons
of God were frequently identified with the Fallen Angels,
and the »Malleus Maleficarum«, following an opinion of St
Thomas Aquinas, asks if their mighty progeny were not, in
fact, the first witches, born of the »pestilent mutual
association« of men with devils.
To Bosch's contemporaries, the melancholy spectacle of sin
and folly could be explained only in terms of the Devil and
his followers seeking to drag mankind into perdition.
Against such overwhelming odds, what chance did the pilgrim
have to reach his homeland? The answer of the medieval
Church may be summed up in the title of Thomas a Kempis's
book, the limitation of Christ«. By renouncing the world and
following the examples set by Christ and his saints, the
pilgrim could hope to pass through the dark night of this
world into Paradise. And although Bosch painted many
pictures mirroring the tragic condition of humanity, he
produced almost as many others which illuminated this path
to salvation.
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Beggars
Pen and bistre, 285 x 205 mm
Albertina, Vienna
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Beggars and Cripples
Pen and bistre, 264 x 198 mm
Bibliotheque Royale Albert I, Brussels
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