![The Haywain by Hieronymus Bosch, Wikimedia [public domain]](http://images.suite101.com/132362_haywain.jpg "The Haywain by Hieronymus Bosch, Wikimedia [public domain]")
"The Haywain" is a symbol of human greed, the decline of the Church, and the disintegration of the guilds that characterized 15th-century society
“The Haywain” by Hieronymus Bosch is overcrowded with objects and figures surrounding a cart laden disproportionately high with hay and with a bush somehow growing from the top. In front of the bush, three people are making music. Standing beside them are an angel and a devil.
To the left, behind the wagon, ride an emperor, a king, and a pope, incongruously providing an escort for a wagonload of dried grass. To the right, the wagon is being pulled by an assortment of strange demonic creatures from the underworld. One of these creatures is a combination of a man and a fish; another is part bird, and a third is a hooded man with branches growing out of his back. Nearby, people can be seen streaming out of a wooden doorway in a mound of earth. The haywain itself is accompanied by men and woman trying to grab handfuls of hay; they fight and fall beneath the wheels.
The cart moves inexorably forward. The foreground of the painting is chaotic, while a clear and beautiful landscape can be seen in the distance. The haywain and its crowd of followers seem to be heading away from pristine innocence toward a place of punishment. The crowd is moving toward their ultimate destination: the day of reckoning.
Artist Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) is well known for paintings that mock equally the hypocrisy of the clergy, the extravagance of nobility, and the immorality of everyday people. His use of Christian symbolism and his extraordinary level of detail come from the traditions of manuscript illustrations of the Middle Ages. In this example, the hay wagon is his symbol for human greed, and his painting depicts the unworthiness of humans and their approaching doom.
Bosch lived during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This painting was probably done between 1485 and 1490 in the city of s’Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands where Bosch lived. At that time, s’Hertogenbosch was a prosperous town of about 25,000 residents. Linen-weaving was the most important industry; the city was also known for its organ builders, bell founders, printers, and forgers of knives, weapons, nails, and pins. About 90 percent of the population worked on estates and in the fields. Certainly a loaded hay wagon, as depicted in Bosch’s painting, would have been a familiar sight to people of the 15th century, as a symbol of food stored for the winter and thus of prosperity.
The prosperity of s’Hertogenbosch could be attributed to a rise in early capitalist methods. Since the height of the Middle Ages, all activities of the skilled trades were regulated by guilds. Now, however, employers introduced new production methods. Those who were successful made more profit than the traditional masters of various crafts and amassed great fortunes. The Netherlandish ruler of the times supported these new production processes since he benefited from the larger taxes that were generated. Because the guilds were resistant to change, they found themselves unable to deal successfully with this competition. In fact, the conflict between those who supported the new system and those who did not came close to civil war.
Another important subject of Bosch’s day was the decaying state of the Catholic Church. Bosch painted this picture of everyone trying to get a handful of hay just 30 years before Martin Luther nailed his Protestant theses to the church door at Wittenburg. Luther objected to the increasing secularization and hypocrisy of the Church. In his view, the behavior of the Pope was no different from that of the princes. Churches were among the biggest landowners. In many cases monks and members of the clergy, although sworn to charity and poverty, considered their own material comforts more important than living a pious life. There were many scandals attributed to the Church; the faithful felt themselves abandoned.
The period when Bosch lived, the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, formed an important point in history. Research and discoveries created an intellectual curiosity. The invention of printing brought information and learning more readily to a wide range of people who were thirsty for it. People took on a humanistic attitude and tried to imagine how to give more meaning to their lives. They were skeptical toward the Church and had doubts about the God-given order of things, but the outward show of processions, pilgrimages, and piety flourished. Those who called for a reformation of the Catholic Church would eventually lead to a schism in western Christianity. The decline of the Church and the dissolution of the guilds characterized the society in which Bosch painted “The Haywain”.
Source:
Hagen, Rose-Marie & Rainer. What Great Paintings Say: Old Masters in Detail. Cologne: Benedikt Tasche, 2000.
