The Wayfarer (painting)
| The Wayfarer | |
|---|---|
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| Artist | Hieronymus Bosch |
| Location | Museum Boymans-van Beuningen |
 | This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. |
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (January 2009) |
The Wayfarer is a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It is currently in Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
This painting is round and is 71.5 cm in diameter.
This character in this painting is strikingly similar to The Path of Life, which is the outside of the The Haywain Triptych.
In her book 'The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch', the writer Lynda Harris has argued that Bosch was a Cathar - a believer in a heretical variety of Christianity that saw this world as the realm of Satan. Ordinary believers in the Cathar religion, ill at ease in a world of ignorance, evil, and debauchery, were highly aware but troubled souls. They were known as Hearers. Bosch represents them as people whose spiritual awareness is still intact - but they are constantly in danger of falling back into a state of spiritual forgetfulness. He frequently represents these ' Cathar Hearers' as pilgrims and wayfarers - sincere seekers who long to achieve salvation but also struggle with the temptations of the world. In Bosch's art they all walk with their backs and knees bent, holding staffs or poles. In this painting a suffering and isolated man, the wayfarer, wanders through a scene of corruption and lust, aware that he is not, or should not be, of this world. He is depicted as a peddler - this could be Bosch's way of emphasising his lack of a permanent home - a stranger in the Devils realm. He walks away from an inn - but he looks backward over his shoulder at the same time. The inn is obviously a place of sin and corruption. Its swan signboard, the pigeons in the loft, the jug, the women - these show that it is a house of prostitution, drunkenness and intoxication. The swan was one of Boschs symbols of prostitution and hypocrisy, its white feathers and beautiful exterior contrasting with its dark flesh; Netherlanders of the 15th century referred to a brothel as a place ' which had pigeons in its loft'; the jug was a symbol of female sexuality.[1] A barrel leaks - a man urinates against the side of the wall - the inn, the world in miniature, is a place where corruption and drunkenness are rife. The peddler's susceptibility to the attractions of the inn is suggested symbolically. The tit above his head is a symbol of wavering weakness. It is menaced by a fierce and predatory owl.(This symbol of weakness confronted by the Prince of the World is found again in St. Jerome at Prayer.) The owl was Bosch's ubiquitous symbol of Satan - if the owl had wisdom , it was the wisdom of darkness. The owls in Bosch's paintings always watch the foolish and evil activities of men and women and seem never to be absent where they are succumbing to the temptations of the world and its evil ruler. [2]
The physical body in which the soul is entrapped is often called an 'impure garment' in Gnostic/heretic Christian literature and this is hinted at in the painting where the peddlers ragged and unkempt clothes symbolise the body's corruption. The bandaged left leg indicates he is wounded - that he is subject to sin - and its location on the left leg identifies his sin as lust. His dual nature which contains both darkness and light, is symbolised by the black and white plumage of the two magpies in the painting. One is trapped in a cage next to the door of the inn - but the other may still fly free - it stands on a bar of the gate in front of the peddler. The wayfarer is grey haired. His journey through life is nearing its end. The spindle in his hat is a traditional symbol of the weaving of the thread of physical life. Only one small strand remains on it - he has little time left. The gallows on the hill behind the gate is a warning to the pilgrim - if his desires should lead to his rebirth in the physical world of death. It is either salvation into the world of light, or rebirth into hell {the Cathar name for the earth}. A fierce dog barks at the peddlers feet - Harris believes this could be an image of the Church Inquisitors who threaten and torment heretical Christians. The dog wears a spiked collar - like the 'dominican' in the Bosch ' Crowning with Thorns'. Dominicans were called the ' dogs of God' as a pun on their names and because they wore black and white habits.