People are always curious about women with a bit of mystery and danger, such as "witches".
Whether it is hermione, the most beautiful little witch in Harry Potter, the crimson witch in the Marvel movie "The Avengers", the teenage witch in Sabrina's Thrilling Adventure, or the dark witch in "Sleeping Curse", they are loved by millions of people.
Yes, witches have become part of our everyday pop culture.
Today, Xiaoyu talks to you about witch culture in Western art history.
Wrightbacker's The Witch
<h1>Witches and scapegoats</h1>
There may not be a society in the world that, at some stage in history, does not believe in witch power, because witches have special magical powers that can be used to do evil, destroy, predict... Sometimes even for the sake of healing. Witches are scapegoats in a world ruled by superstition.
Although the story of witchcraft has been changing in Europe for centuries, one thing that has remained consistent is its special connection to the group of "women".
Medieval witch painting
Whether you're referring to the Bible or Shakespeare's plays, witches are usually ugly and evil creatures. In art and stories, they are mostly portrayed as women, but there are also cases of real men and children being tried and executed as witches. The idea of witchcraft caused panic among the masses at different times, and this combination of fear and interest created fertile ground for the artist.
"Even in ancient Greco-Roman times, legends about witches were the source of pottery ornaments, or the subject matter behind frescoes and sculptures," Diana said.
Prints and texts also played an important role in shaping people's perceptions of witchcraft, and books such as Maleficarum of 1487 introduced the iconography of shamans, and printmaking allowed these ideas and images to spread widely and cheaply.
In Dürer's print, a witch riding on the back of a goat holds an alchemist's jar in her hand.
Dürer was an artist who drew inspiration from these words and applied them to his own work. In 1500 he carved a witch riding a goat, a symbol of Satan, which captured the public fascination with witches at the time and will continue to provide reference for other witch figures.
<h1>Witch Hunt Operation</h1>
Salvador Rosa, The Witch's Spell
Countless women accused of being witches confessed to participating in witchcraft when they could not bear the torture.
With the prevalence of witch trials in the 16th century, there was an even greater shift in the concept of witchcraft, which was later reflected in art. Some of the most important paintings on this subject coincide with witch fever throughout Europe, such as Salvatore Rossa's The Witch's Spell.
Witch hunts in the Middle Ages
Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, there was a vigorous witch hunt, and all this is still directly related to the witch's "scapegoat" status.
At that time, every once in a while in Western Europe, plagues and natural disasters would break out, and at that time, in the stage of technological ignorance, people generally believed that this was the scourge of witches, and as long as they were found and killed, the root cause would be removed.
Brutal witch hunts
In that obscure era, "execution of witches" was equivalent to the most vulgar circus performances. When the "witch" is put on trial, she has to be examined naked to satisfy the perverted sensory stimulation of the men. Therefore, whenever there is a "good play" of executing a witch, it often causes a scene of thousands of empty alleys like a temple fair.
Helen Duncan, who falsely claimed to have been convicted of the psychic medium
There are even modern women who have been convicted of being "witches" involved.
In 1944, Helen Duncan was the last person convicted in the British Witchcraft Act. She falsely claimed to be a psychic and was sentenced to 9 months in prison under the 1735 law. Now in the Sterling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, there is a bronze bust similar to her.
<h1>Is it a witch, or a woman who suggests sex? </h1>
Francis II, The Witch's Sabbath
Flemish artist Francis II's The Sabbath of the Witches highlights the loose morality of witches in an almost comical way. The image highlights the sexual characteristics of witches, showing women who are disheveled or have suggestive sexual postures. The depiction, which includes little monsters and bodhi flying up the chimney, diminishes the underlying seriousness of the subject and pushes it to the point of absurdity.
Jan van der Wild II represents an etching of the witch theme.
Another work by Jan van der Verde II during this period also employs similar dramatic images of demons and chaos. It's about smoking pipes. Witches are now associated with one of the sins of society at the time, smoking. Witchcraft is sometimes just one factor in people enjoying life, and people can become lascivious and rude as a result.
Goya etchs the Capricorn series of "The Witch Flies"
The influence of the Enlightenment on magic and mystical beliefs was embodied in astrology, and this effect was similar to that of witchcraft: as societies developed toward rational-based ideas, superstitious beliefs decreased.
This is also reflected in the depiction of witches in art, and to some extent, Goya's Capricorn uses witches as a symbol, a metaphor for corruption and disintegration, especially to the clergy. He was absolutely obsessed with witches, but he was also a man of intellectual dissidents and with everything in enlightened Spain—but Goya, like everyone else, was fascinated by the witch's past, which had not yet completely passed.
Henry Fosselli, Macbeth, Bancor and the Witch
Around the same time in England, the Swiss-born painter Henri Forselli was painting similar subjects including fairies and witches, and like many artists of the period, he drew inspiration from stories and myths. Another fashion was to paint scenes from Shakespeare's plays, and witches appeared in many of Shakespeare's works.
<h1>Witches and feminism</h1>
Valentin Cameron Princep, "Medea the Witch"
John William Waterhouse The Lord of the Rings
While stories about witchcraft have been changing in Europe for centuries, one thing that has remained consistent is its connection to women.
The topic of witches is used to comment on women's beauty, sexuality, and morality. In John William Waterhouse's painting The Lord of the Rings, we see a witch standing by a smoking cauldron. Unlike her previous image of a witch, she was brightly dressed, young, and relatively prettier. She held a wand in her hand and drew a protective circle around herself. Inside the circle are beautiful flowers, and outside are frogs and crows—both associated with witchcraft. These ideas evolved into sexist notions of women as morally depraved, thus allowing men to morally indulge and get into trouble.
Edward Jones's The Seduction of Merlin, the witch Slightly Ann deceives Merlin of her love and trust, and eventually uses Merlin's hypnosis to set a curse that binds him.
From the beginning of the Symbolist movement in the mid-19th century until the beginning of the 20th century, there was a dirty notion of sex that women were carriers and infectors of STDs, that women were hysters, that women were hypocrites, or that women were manipulative liars. Many contemporary artists, especially female artists, find this attitude repulsive to artists in some way responding to witches being treated as.
Witches also became an international organization in the 20th century as an advocate for women
By the 20th century, witches had also become a boost to the feminist movement in the 1960s, and the resurrection of "witches" became a powerful symbol of feminist liberation. This mysterious witch revival also began to show up in the field of art, and even spread to the political field.
The history of witches is the history of women. The entire history of the development of the witch image is also a history of changes in female charm and disenchantment.