Witchcraft and the supernatural have long been popular themes in art, with famous witch paintings capturing the intrigue and mystery surrounding these powerful women. Throughout history, artists have depicted witches in various ways, both as villainous figures and as symbols of feminine power. One of the most iconic witch paintings is "The Witches' Sabbath" by Francisco Goya. Painted in 1798, this haunting piece portrays a group of witches gathered in a moonlit forest. The dark and eerie atmosphere, along with the twisted and contorted figures, evokes a sense of ritualistic chaos. Goya's use of chiaroscuro and his mastery of capturing the human form in extreme poses adds to the overall intensity of the painting.
Bewitched: Paintings of witches 1
Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Witches' Sabbath (1797-98), oil on canvas, 43 x 30 cm, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
This coming week, in my series on paintings of Shakespeare’s plays, we reach the tragedy of Macbeth, famous for its scene involving three witches. So this weekend I look at some other paintings of witches and their dark arts and crafts.
Although prints of witches have long proved popular, patrons prepared to pay masters to paint them scenes of witches seem to have been fewer in number. Their equivalent in classical myths, sorceresses such as Medea and Circe, have been enduringly popular, though; I’ll save those for another time.
Agostino Tassi (1580–1644), Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft (1620-44), oil on canvas, 63.2 x 74.5 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. Wikimedia Commons.
One of the earlier images of witchcraft is among the few of Agostino Tassi’s easel paintings to have survived. His Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft (1620-44) shows an enigmatic view of witches at work on either side of a body of water. The woman in the left foreground is holding a rod in a small fire, and is surrounded by the objects of her craft. On the other side, several figures are at work around another fire.
Domenicus van Wijnen (1661–1698), The Witches’ Sabbath by Moonlight (date not known), oil on canvas, 73 x 57.5 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
Later in the seventeenth century, Domenicus van Wijnen explored this theme more explicitly in The Witches’ Sabbath by Moonlight, which is set in a moonlit Italian landscape. This combines many of the now-classical symbols associated with ‘the dark arts’, and is taking place at an outdoor altar set up at the foot of the gallows, on which a dead body hangs.
Two women are shown as witches: an older one riding a horned goat facing backwards, who is leaping over a very large smoking cauldron, and a younger woman at the left, who has a wand in her left hand and is accompanied by a boy. Clustered in front of the altar at the right is a soldier in armour, who is looking in a mirror at the image of another, and another woman who is kneeling, and holding a snake in her right hand.
Nearby is the dead body of a robber, his gun by his head, an infant, and a cat. The surface of the altar has been prepared with bread and wine, and there is a small chimera by it. A bat flies in the distance, and a transparent figure is passing through a hoop mounted on top of the gallows.
Domenicus van Wijnen (1661–1698), The Witchmaster (date not known), oil on canvas, 75 × 62.5 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
In The Witchmaster, also set in the Italian countryside at night, van Wijnen has adjusted the symbolic objects, removing the altar and making the supervising witch into a bearded man. There are three novel introductions: a wild boar breathing fire, references to images in the form of a reflection in a mirror of the woman at the lower left corner, and an odd viewing box in the centre of the foreground, which has a painting within the painting.
Paradoxically, it wasn’t until the Age of Enlightenment that patrons appear to have become fascinated enough by witches and their craft to commission paintings of them. My best example is of Francisco Goya, who painted a succession of scenes of witchcraft for members of the Spanish royal court at the end of the eighteenth century.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Witches’ Sabbath (1797-98), oil on canvas, 43 x 30 cm, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Goya’s Witches’ Sabbath from 1797-98, painted for the Duchess of Osuna, is perhaps the clearest vision of a “witches’ sabbath” from this period. His devil is a billy goat with lyre-shaped horns and evil human-like posture, and above that are several dark shapes of flying bats.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Witches’ Flight (1798), oil on canvas, 43.5 x 30.5 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Goya’s Witches’ Flight (1798) shows three witches levitating in the air, while carrying a naked body, which they appear to be exorcising. Below them are a donkey and another two human figures, one shrouded in a white sheet to cover their eyes, the other lying on the ground covering their ears – a possible reference to Goya’s own deafness and tinnitus at the time.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) (1821-23), oil on plaster transferred to canvas, 140.5 x 435.7 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), painted when Goya was in his seventies, refers back to those earlier paintings for the Duchess of Osuna, with the black-cloaked figure of the devil incarnate as a billy-goat, sat in front of a mass of hideous women gathered at their Sabbath.
The interest of artists and intellectuals in witches and their craft only grew in the nineteenth century. The first part of Goethe’s hugely popular drama Faust was published in 1808, and quickly attracted the attention of painters and illustrators.
Theodor von Holst (1810-1844), Fantasy Based on Goethe’s ‘Faust’ (1834), oil on canvas, 111.6 x 75.7 cm, The Tate Gallery (Purchased 1990), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holst-fantasy-based-on-goethes-faust-t05747
Several artists have produced composite fantasy views of the play’s climactic Walpurgis Night centred on the figure of Gretchen. Theodor von Holst’s Fantasy Based on Goethe’s ‘Faust’ (1834) puts Mephistopheles beside her as she stirs a witches’ cauldron. Holst was a Latvian who settled in London in 1807, where he became a pupil of Henry Fuseli, and followed his teacher’s themes and style.
John Martin (1789–1854), Manfred and the Alpine Witch (1837), watercolour, 38.8 x 55.8 cm, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England. Wikimedia Commons.
In 1816-17, following his ostracisation over alleged incest with his half-sister, Lord Byron wrote Manfred: A Dramatic Poem. Its eponymous hero is tortured by guilt in relation to the death of his beloved Astarte. Living in the Bernese Alps, he casts spells to summon seven spirits to help him forget and sublimate his guilt. As the spirits cannot control past events, he doesn’t achieve his aim, and cannot even escape by suicide. In the end, he dies.
John Martin’s watercolour shows Manfred conjuring a witch from a flooded cave in the mountains. Unusually light and sublime but (exceptionally for this artist) not apocalyptic, it is perhaps one of Martin’s most beautiful works, and reminiscent of Turner’s alpine paintings.
Art Matters podcast: the art history of witches
'Tis the season for talk of witches and ghouls, though, in reality, witches have become part of our everyday pop culture all the year-round. Harry Potter alone is a multi-billion-pound franchise, endearing millions to the story of a little wizard boy and his witchy mates. Sabrina the Teenage Witch is another example – whether you like the comic, the 1990s television series or the darker Netflix reboot, it's a popular franchise centred on an age-old concept.
Wright Barker (1864–1941)
Bradford Museums and Galleries
'There's probably not a society in the whole world which, at some stage in its history, has not believed in the power of witches as beings with special magical powers that can be used for malignant, destructive, predictive . or even occasionally for healing purposes,' says artist, art historian and curator, Deanna Petherbridge. 'Witches are the scapegoats in a world governed by superstition.'
Though the narrative around witchcraft shifts across the centuries in Europe, one thing that remained consistent was its connection to women.
Whether your reference point is the Bible or one of Shakespeare's plays, witches are often made out to be hideous and nefarious creatures. They are largely depicted as women in art and stories, but there are cases of real men and children who were also tried and executed as witches. The idea of witchcraft has been a cause of mass panic at various points, and this combination of fear and interest created fertile ground for artists.
'Even in the Greco-Roman world, the legends about witches were sources of pottery decorations or the subject matter behind frescoes and sculptures,' says Deanna.
Printmaking and texts played an important role in shaping people's ideas around witchcraft, and the invention of the Gutenberg printing press meant that texts referencing witches were more easily disseminated. Books like De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus ('Of Witches and Diviner Women') in 1489 and the Malleus Maleficarum from 1487 informed the iconology of witches, and printmaking made it possible for these ideas and images to spread widely and cheaply.
A Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, with Four Putti Carrying an Alchemist's Pot.
c.1500, engraving by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
One artist who took ideas from these texts and applied them to his work was Albrecht Dürer. His engraving produced in 1500 of a witch riding a goat – a symbol of Satan – is one of his most famous works on this subject. It captures the public's fascination with witches at the time and would go on to inform other representations of witches.
'Dürer, in a sense, and his principle pupil who was called Hans Baldung Grien . really established this kind of iconography,' says Deanna. 'The iconography is amplified by the artists, but it does come from the texts.'
Salvator Rosa (1615–1673)
The National Gallery, London
As witch trials became prevalent in the sixteenth century, ideas around witchcraft took a more serious turn that is later reflected in art. Some of the most significant paintings on the subject coincide with this period of witch-mania across Europe and can be found in UK collections. Witches at their Incantations (1646) by Salvator Rosa in The National Gallery collection is one such example.
'[Salvator Rosa] was also a poet, a playwright, he also knew all the influential people of the time,' says Deanna. 'And a lot of them at this time were as interested in witchcraft and the ideas about it as they were in other seventeenth-century matters.'
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum
One of the last people to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act in the United Kingdom was Helen Duncan in 1944. She falsely purported herself to be a medium and was sentenced to nine months in prison under the 1735 law. There is now a bronze bust of her likeness in The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum.
Frans Francken II (1581–1642)
Witches' Sabbath by Flemish artist Frans Francken II highlights the loose morals of witches in an almost comical fashion. The image plays up the sexuality of witches, showing some of the women partially clothed or in suggestive positions. The inclusion of little monsters and putti flying up the chimney detracts from the potential seriousness of the subject, pushing it into the ridiculous.
1626, etching & engraving by Jan van de Velde II (c.1593–1641)
Another print around this period by Jan van de Velde II employs similar dramatic imagery of demons and chaos. 'It's about pipe-smoking. Witches have become associated now with one of the social evils of the time, which was smoking,' says Deanna. 'Witchcraft sometimes is just a factor for people to enjoy themselves – to be lewd, to be rude.'
Volaverunt (They have flown)
(from 'Los Caprichos'), 1799, etching, aquatint & burin by Francisco de Goya (1746–1828)
In the astrology episode, we discussed the impact the Age of Enlightenment on people's belief in magic and the occult. The effect was similar with witchcraft: as society moved towards ideas that could be grounded in reason, there was a decline in superstitious beliefs. This is reflected in the depiction of witches in art, and we can take Francisco Goya's 'Los Caprichos' series, which includes several images of witches, as an example.
'He's using witches as a symbol, in a way – a metaphor for corruption and dissolution, particularly of clerics,' says Deanna. 'He was absolutely obsessed with witches, but he was also a man who associated with intellectuals, with political dissidents, with all the things of an enlightened Spain – but he was also, like everybody else, still fascinated with a past that hadn't been completely put to bed.'
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825)
National Trust, Petworth House
Around the same time in Britain, Swiss-born painter Henry Fuseli was painting similar subjects, including fairies and witches, but his inspiration was slightly different. Like many artists of this period, Fuseli drew inspiration from stories and mythology. There was also a fashion for painting scenes from Shakespeare, and witches appear in many of Shakespeare's works.
John William Waterhouse (1849–1917)
Though the narrative around witchcraft shifts across the centuries in Europe, one thing that remained consistent was its connection to women. The subject was leveraged as a way of commenting on women's beauty, sexuality and morality. In John William Waterhouse's painting titled The Magic Circle, we see a witch standing next to a smoking cauldron. Unlike the previous examples, she's fully clothed, youthful and relatively good-looking. She holds a wand in her hand as she draws a protective circle around herself. Inside the circle are beautiful flowers, and outside are frogs and ravens – both of which are associated with witchcraft. These ideas evolve into sexist perceptions of women as beings of loose morals that entrap men.
'By the time we get to Symbolist movement, which starts in the mid-nineteenth century and goes onto the beginning of the twentieth century, there is a nasty and sexual notion of women as the carriers and infectors of venereal disease, of women as hysterics, of women as hypocrites, or women as manipulative liars,' says Deanna. 'So many contemporary artists – particularly women artists – have found these attitudes distasteful. Artists are . responding in a way to 'witch' being taken over as 'bitch'.'
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Many Interesting Facts
Witches inspired many artists and I will present some of their works with few facts about magic, witchcraft and similar stuff. All paintings on this page are in Public Domain because their authors are dead for more then 70 years. All can be found on Wikimedia, great repository of knowledge, but not so great index of stored material.
As we can see on next painting by Francisco Goya (1746-1828), witches often perform their rituals in groups called covens.
The Coven by Francisco Goya
Ladies are not alone. This painting shows their worship of the devil who joined them in the form of a goat. The connection between witches and devil was introduced only around the year 1000 AD. This is probably connected with belief this year will bring the end of the world but we’ll not go into details. Goat is not the only creature, associated with witches.
Male witch on the broom
This one flies with a bat. Work is signed by Cosmas Damian Asam (1686-1739) and is typical baroque. Note the muscles!
Sourcer and dragon
This time with a dragon. Painting is made by Franz Karl Spitzweg (1808-1885).
Witch and a scarecrow in the snow
And with a scarecrow! (By the way, I hope, you recognized the style of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1939), one of the founders of German Expressionism.
Witchcraft can be done in groups or solo. Here is another assembly:
An assembly of the witches
The painting above is another example of baroque art. This time this is work by Frans Francken (1581-1642). Let’s take a look at another work of Francisco Goya:
Naming this kind of gathering Sabbath clearly alludes on Jews who were appropriate scapegoats for Christians for many centuries. The reason for this is partly in their knowledge of science which was often misunderstood as magic.
A skilled witch was able to save or take lives thanks to her knowledge of herbs. The painting above is work of Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919). Although witchcraft was never exclusive to fair sex (check paintings above again), ladies were most of the history (which predates Christianity for many centuries) in vast majority. Association of women with magic is almost for sure a consequence of the biggest miracle women were able to perform – giving birth.
I will substantiate this theory with interesting fact – Hecate, the goddess of sorcery was originally a goddess of wilderness and childbirth. Here we can see how William Blake (1757-1827) portrayed her:
The Triple Hecate
Talking about famous witches we must also mention Circe, dangerous mistress of Odysseus:
Circe offering the cup to Odysseus
Painting is made by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), who also signed next work of art:
Jason and Medea
Antique was not the only time appropriate for witches. Arthurian legends are loaded with poitions, spells and magic. The most famous sorceress was Morgan le Fay:
This painting was made by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904). Of course we can’t conclude our journey without witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
Macbeth and Banque meet the weird sisters
The painting above is work from John Wootton (around 1682-1764), the next painting is from Daniel Gardner (1750-1805).
The three witches
And here is a sorceress from the Bible, the famous witch of Endor:
The biblical scene with Saul in trouble was painted by Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749) and the next one is made by Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge.
We could go on and on but this should be enough for today. If you are already in the right mood, you can put suitable witch costume on and start partying…
For everybody else: good night:)
Goya's use of chiaroscuro and his mastery of capturing the human form in extreme poses adds to the overall intensity of the painting. Another famous witch painting is "The Last Witch" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Painted in 1906, this piece depicts a lone witch standing defiantly against a backdrop of stormy skies.
The painting is notable for its use of vibrant colors and expressive brushwork, conveying a sense of both power and vulnerability. Gallen-Kallela's portrayal of the witch as a solitary figure suggests themes of isolation and persecution. "The Salem Martyr" by Thomas Satterwhite Noble is a powerful depiction of the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th century. Painted in 1869, this work shows a group of accused witches being led to their execution. The painting captures the fear and hysteria that swept through Salem during this time, with the accused women portrayed as helpless victims of a mass delusion. Noble's use of muted colors and somber lighting adds to the sense of despair and injustice. In more recent times, modern artists such as Alexander McQueen have also explored the theme of witches in their work. McQueen's renowned fashion shows often incorporated elements of witchcraft, with models dressed in hauntingly beautiful garments and surrounded by dark and mystical settings. These shows served as a way to challenge traditional beauty standards and explore the subversive power of women. Famous witch paintings continue to captivate audiences with their atmospheric settings, symbolic imagery, and thought-provoking narratives. Whether portrayed as villains, symbols of feminine power, or victims of persecution, witches in art serve as a reminder of the timeless fascination with the supernatural and the enduring power of female empowerment..
Reviews for "The Subversive Beauty of Famous Witch Paintings"
1. Sarah - 2/5 - I was really excited to see the "Famous witch paintings" exhibit, but I left feeling disappointed. The artwork felt flat and lacking in depth. The colors were dull and the compositions lacked creativity. I was hoping to see some truly captivating and mesmerizing witch paintings, but instead, I was met with mundane and uninspiring pieces. I wouldn't recommend this exhibit to anyone looking for a truly enchanting and magical art experience.
2. John - 1/5 - As an art enthusiast, I found the "Famous witch paintings" exhibit to be utterly underwhelming. The paintings lacked skill and were nowhere near the level of quality that I expected. The subject matter felt cliché and poorly executed. It seemed like the artist relied heavily on outdated tropes and cliches instead of exploring the depth and complexity that could be found within witchcraft. Overall, I found the exhibit to be a missed opportunity, and I would advise against wasting your time and money on it.
3. Emily - 2/5 - I have always been fascinated by witchcraft and the supernatural, so I was excited to visit the "Famous witch paintings" exhibit. However, I left feeling unimpressed. The paintings all felt repetitive and lacked originality. It felt like the artist was simply replicating the same image over and over again with slight variations. Additionally, the overall quality of the paintings was disappointing. The brushstrokes were sloppy and the color choices were dull. I was expecting to be mesmerized by the witch paintings, but instead, I found myself struggling to feel any connection or intrigue. I wouldn't recommend this exhibit to anyone looking for unique and captivating witch art.