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Lot Essay
A group of women have gathered at night in a wooded landscape below an ancient broken tree. They are of different ages, all naked and with long flowing hair. Three in the foreground are seated or kneeling around a lidded pot inscribed with mysterious letters. One, seated on the right, is holding a large wooden spoon and lifting the lid just enough to let a cloud of steam rushing out and rise to the sky. Out with it come small stones, but also frogs or toads. On the left, with her back towards us sits another woman who raises a beaker with her left hand, perhaps filled with the brew from the pot. The third woman, older and skinnier, is kneeling at centre and looking down at the pot, her mouth open as if shouting. With stretched arms she holds a shawl above her head and in her right hand raises a platter filled with the carcasses of two birds. Behind them sits a fourth, also older woman, while a young one rides backwards through the air on a he-goat. With a pitchfork she holds a clay jar with two chicken legs sticking out. A sixth woman, mostly obscured by the billowing steam, flies into the night sky at upper left. The women on the floor are surrounded by a variety of creatures and things: the woman at left sits in the middle of a triangle formed by pitchforks, behind it sits a cat. In the foreground lies a shield, a flywhisk or brush, a joint of meat, a horse's skull, perhaps a severed human head and some bones. At centre left we glimpse another goat's head and an amphora, as well as some sausages hanging over another pitchfork. This disturbing and confusing scene is described with great graphic clarity and force against a black background.
The Witches’ Sabbath is Hans Baldung’s first woodcut on a truly large scale, created in the year after his return to Strasbourg and after having worked as an apprentice in Dürer’s workshop from 1503 to about 1507. It is also the first woodcut he attempted to print in colour, in direct competition with the chiaroscuro woodcuts created by his contemporaries Lucas Cranach and Hans Burgkmair who had made their earliest forays into colour printing in 1506 and 1508 respectively (see also lots 87 & 92). The present impression is of the so-called first state printed from the black line block only, although the colour block intended to give the blank areas a brownish or grey tint was probably conceived at the same time. In either version, this is clearly a work of great ambition as well as a bold statement, a deliberate sensation. Never before in the print medium had naked women been depicted in such a candid way, and never before had witchcraft - or the myth of it – been illustrated so brazenly. In the years to come, witches would become an important motif in Baldung’s oeuvre, to which he would return in several astonishing and highly finished drawings (see Jacob-Friesen, 2019, nos. 156-160) and finally in the famous painting Two Witches of 1523 (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; inv. no. 1123), but the present woodcut was his first breathtaking image of this scandalous subject. Mende considered the print ‘one of the most grandiose woodcuts of Western art’ (Mende, 1978, no. 16 [our translation]).
The belief in witches and witchcraft was widespread amongst humanists and clerics, circles in which Baldung moved. In Strasbourg in 1487, the inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger had published their notorious - and from today’s perspective deeply misogynist - handbook for the persecution of witches, the Malleus maleficarum (‘Der Hexenhammer’). Witch hunts, denunciations and the torture and execution of women suspected of practicing magic became a common occurrence in the south-west of Germany and in Alsace, and other publications on the subject followed (see J. Carasco in: Jacob-Friesen, p. 316), which kept the fear and hate – and the pyres – burning.
It has been much discussed but may be impossible to know what Baldung’s own attitude towards the witches he printed, drew and painted was. Mende suggests that he expressed his own fears in these works, as well as the pervasive anxiety of his time, around 1500, about the impending end of the world. Other authors felt that the artist was taking a more distanced, humanist and humorous position to his subject, while some saw it as a mere pretext for the depiction of voluptuous, nude women. Undoubtedly, some of Baldung’s exquisite drawings of witches are explicitly, unashamedly erotic – and amusing. The present woodcut of the Witches’ Sabbath, although bold and visually unambiguous, is a more complex image. There can be no doubt that Baldung with this print deliberately chose a subject that loomed large in the popular imagination of his time. Many of the symbols and accoutrements of witchcraft depicted here were part of folk beliefs, such as the cat, the triangle, the poisonous stew, the skull and the ability to fly. The witch riding backwards on the goat may have also been a commonplace, but here is a direct quote from Dürer’s small engraving of The Witch of 1500, perhaps a mere appropriation or a conscious tribute to his former master. His women, although stark naked, are here not depicted in an overtly sexual manner. What is striking, at least to the modern eye, however, is the liberty with which these women act. They do not worship a (male) devil or demon but perform their own rituals and freely follow their own pursuits. Perhaps it was their self-determination which, above all, caused fear and fascination in equal measure for Baldung’s contemporaries – and which still captivates us today.
The woodcut appears to have been printed in very small quantities. Impressions with the colour block are very rare, impressions printed in black are rarer still. Hollstein recorded a total of seven examples to come to the market between 1909 and 1932, including two in black – one from the collection of Adalbert von Lanna; and the present one from the collection of the Counts of Herberstein. To our knowledge, no other example has been sold publicly since then.
The Witches’ Sabbath is Hans Baldung’s first woodcut on a truly large scale, created in the year after his return to Strasbourg and after having worked as an apprentice in Dürer’s workshop from 1503 to about 1507. It is also the first woodcut he attempted to print in colour, in direct competition with the chiaroscuro woodcuts created by his contemporaries Lucas Cranach and Hans Burgkmair who had made their earliest forays into colour printing in 1506 and 1508 respectively (see also lots 87 & 92). The present impression is of the so-called first state printed from the black line block only, although the colour block intended to give the blank areas a brownish or grey tint was probably conceived at the same time. In either version, this is clearly a work of great ambition as well as a bold statement, a deliberate sensation. Never before in the print medium had naked women been depicted in such a candid way, and never before had witchcraft - or the myth of it – been illustrated so brazenly. In the years to come, witches would become an important motif in Baldung’s oeuvre, to which he would return in several astonishing and highly finished drawings (see Jacob-Friesen, 2019, nos. 156-160) and finally in the famous painting Two Witches of 1523 (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; inv. no. 1123), but the present woodcut was his first breathtaking image of this scandalous subject. Mende considered the print ‘one of the most grandiose woodcuts of Western art’ (Mende, 1978, no. 16 [our translation]).
The belief in witches and witchcraft was widespread amongst humanists and clerics, circles in which Baldung moved. In Strasbourg in 1487, the inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger had published their notorious - and from today’s perspective deeply misogynist - handbook for the persecution of witches, the Malleus maleficarum (‘Der Hexenhammer’). Witch hunts, denunciations and the torture and execution of women suspected of practicing magic became a common occurrence in the south-west of Germany and in Alsace, and other publications on the subject followed (see J. Carasco in: Jacob-Friesen, p. 316), which kept the fear and hate – and the pyres – burning.
It has been much discussed but may be impossible to know what Baldung’s own attitude towards the witches he printed, drew and painted was. Mende suggests that he expressed his own fears in these works, as well as the pervasive anxiety of his time, around 1500, about the impending end of the world. Other authors felt that the artist was taking a more distanced, humanist and humorous position to his subject, while some saw it as a mere pretext for the depiction of voluptuous, nude women. Undoubtedly, some of Baldung’s exquisite drawings of witches are explicitly, unashamedly erotic – and amusing. The present woodcut of the Witches’ Sabbath, although bold and visually unambiguous, is a more complex image. There can be no doubt that Baldung with this print deliberately chose a subject that loomed large in the popular imagination of his time. Many of the symbols and accoutrements of witchcraft depicted here were part of folk beliefs, such as the cat, the triangle, the poisonous stew, the skull and the ability to fly. The witch riding backwards on the goat may have also been a commonplace, but here is a direct quote from Dürer’s small engraving of The Witch of 1500, perhaps a mere appropriation or a conscious tribute to his former master. His women, although stark naked, are here not depicted in an overtly sexual manner. What is striking, at least to the modern eye, however, is the liberty with which these women act. They do not worship a (male) devil or demon but perform their own rituals and freely follow their own pursuits. Perhaps it was their self-determination which, above all, caused fear and fascination in equal measure for Baldung’s contemporaries – and which still captivates us today.
The woodcut appears to have been printed in very small quantities. Impressions with the colour block are very rare, impressions printed in black are rarer still. Hollstein recorded a total of seven examples to come to the market between 1909 and 1932, including two in black – one from the collection of Adalbert von Lanna; and the present one from the collection of the Counts of Herberstein. To our knowledge, no other example has been sold publicly since then.