For my fantasy work-in-progress, I was looking for details of what a foot peddler might carry. Up came this etching by Wenceslaus Hollar after a picture in The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger. The wicker pannier resembles one in The Wayfarer by Hieronymous Bosch. Check. But what about the animal?
The Metropolitan Museum calls it a dog, and it certainly may be a dog with a poodle- or lion-cut. But in an emblem, it must symbolize something, and I can't run down what. (Fidelity doesn't seem to work here.) Moreover, it need not be a naturalistic element. Maybe this really is an actual lion, though again I don't know what it would symbolize. Nor do I care!
If we were art historians, we'd have to run down the possible meanings of the beast. Instead, think about how you might incorporate it into a piece of fiction. Could you account for a peddler's having acquired a fancy dog? (Is it death to steal one?) Or what would it mean for a small lion to be accompanying a trader on his travels? Is there a clue in the small building in the distance toward which the animal is turned? Would you set this in a European-style medieval fantasy world? in a Mesopotamian world where a miniature lion might have escaped a garden?
Just one element in a picture can prompt a whole new direction for the imagination. I'm off to fill that pannier with maybe, just maybe—lion cubs?