Top 10 Depictions of Witchcraft in Art

Witchcraft has a long history, though its violent connotations stem from men historically demonizing women in an attempt to reinforce the patriarchal hierarchy of society. In response to this, witchcraft has been the subject of art for centuries. Some artworks warned against the so-called dangers of witches, while others used it as a device for criticism, calling attention to superstitions and the societal harm caused by outdated ideas of religion. Others used witchcraft in their art as a form of womanly power in a patriarchal society.

Witch Hill (The Salem Martyr) is a dramatic portrayal of the Salem Witch Trials that occurred in Massachusetts in the late 17th century. The figures stand on a hill, with a natural scene behind them. The sun is setting in soft tones of shadowy blue and vibrant orange, a burst of fire before the dark. The central figure stands in the center of the frame. She is the witch, with her hands bound and the men rallying behind her to take her away to her imminent death. However, there is sympathy in Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s portrayal that can be found in her forlorn eyes. Her facial expression shows the viewer her innocence, while the men behind her remain willfully ignorant. They look at the young girl with disdain, their minds already resolved in believing their victim to be guilty of witchcraft.

Thomas Satterwhite Noble studied art in France in the 1850s, but he grew up in Kentucky on a plantation that used enslaved people for labor. When he returned to his family’s new home in Missouri, he fought in the Civil War as a Confederate soldier until 1865. The Confederate cause was clearly one he could not align with, and he experienced guilt over his involvement in Confederate history.

Witches’ Sabbath by Frans Francken can be intense at first glance, and this was done purposefully by the artist. He painted a scene that changes with each new figure, swinging fiercely between beauty and wickedness. Two beautiful women stand out immediately with their bright dresses and the light falling on them, making them nearly glow on the canvas. However, after noticing the beautiful women, one’s gaze quickly moves to the chaos behind them. The witches have summoned demons. They overtake the tavern, tormenting the patrons who run screaming. Skulls and knives litter the floor, surrounded by mysterious markings scratched or burned into the floor where the witches performed their ritual. Ingredients surround the site, such as little jars and bowls, herbs, seeds, and more. A demon is given life at the witches’ feet, emerging from their summoning circle.

8. The Witch by Albrecht Dürer

In Albrecht Dürer’s The Witch, a nude woman sits backward on a large goat. Her hair and the goat move in the same direction, defying the laws of nature. This was purposeful, as Dürer sought to record the latest craze about witches in early 16th-century German society. People of the 16th century believed that witches could change the natural way of things, such as which direction one’s hair blows while riding a goat. The goat, too, is a symbol. Goats are traditionally understood in Western cultures as symbols of the devil.

Below the witch and goat are puttis—representations of cherub-like children in art—carrying various items believed to have been used for witchcraft. One carries a cauldron for alchemy. The other hoists a small thorny apple tree, known for its magical properties in potions and spells, on its shoulders. Another one breaks wind towards the viewer as his friend reaches for his walking stick. Their bodies twist to create a circle on the page, completed by the goat.

The message Dürer puts out with The Witch is clearly not a sympathetic one. He has created her to be ugly according to early 16th-century standards. She is a naked, old woman with flaccid breasts and hair growing on her chin, using cherubs to do her hard work, holding a broom yet riding a cloven-hooved animal. Not only were witches viewed as sinful and unappealing, but they were also seen as a threat to society and salvation. Between 1560 and 1630, more than 40,000 people were killed across Western Europe as a result of what historians call The Great Hunt. This was helped by publications like the Malleus Maleficarum, a guide for cleansing witches from society.

Frederick Sandys was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of artists, poets, and critics in the mid-19th century. He studied in Norwich under his father, Anthony Sands, who specialized in portrait painting and drawing. After exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1851, he moved there permanently and married Georgina Creed, the daughter of another artist. However, Sandys was in a long-term relationship with a Romani woman named Keomi Gray, who served as the sitter for the Medea painting.

Medea is a mythical enchantress of Ancient Greek origin featured in a play by Euripides. She stands in front of a small fire, feeding magical ingredients to the flames with an expression of desperate horror. Her figure takes up most of the frame, creating a sense of secret intimacy as she attempts to use her powers to help her lover.

Medea was the daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, the son of the god Helios, which makes her Helios’s granddaughter. Jason, an ancient hero, had come to Colchis to find the Golden Fleece and the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena had Cupid prick Medea with love for Jason so that she would help him during his quest. Before Medea met Jason, she had met Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, who taught her magic.

Jason had to undergo three impossible tasks set by her father to obtain the Golden Fleece. The tasks were truly impossible, so Medea helped him go through them by creating ointment that made him immune to fire, warning him of upcoming tricks, and using herbs to make a dragon sleep so Jason could kill it.

John William Waterhouse was fascinated with mythology and magic and often included those themes in his paintings. The Magic Circle is a notable example of his work depicting witchcraft. The central figure stands next to a cauldron, though it is hard to discern what kind of witch she is. Her hair is Anglo-Saxon in style, while her clothing is Persian or Greek.

Next to her is a tripod with a fire underneath. It sends a column of steam into the sky as she draws a circle around herself. Ravens line up around the circle to witness the ritual, one perching on a human skull in the sand. She has a snake wrapped around her neck as she works. Flowers, presumably the ingredients for her ritual, are heaped into a neat pile next to the fire and tied around her waist in her sash. In her hand is a golden sickle, whose shape links her to Hecate, who is often represented by a triple moon.

Art historians have argued that this painting was made in defense of the woman in the circle, as all of the evil aspects of witchcraft, such as the skull and ravens, are portrayed outside the circle. Meanwhile, flowers can be seen inside the circle, as a beautiful element of the natural world.

5. The Witches by Hans Baldung

Hans Baldung came from a family of academic and law professionals. This made him different than his contemporaries, most of whom came from an artistic background. In 1503, Baldung became a part of Albrecht Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg, where he earned himself a new nickname, Grien, which is why his name often appears as Hans Baldung Grien. Baldung was interested in his master’s work and was inspired by Dürer’s witches, which led him to make chiaroscuro woodcut prints of witches.

At the top of the woodcut The Witches, a nude witch rides a goat with her hair flowing in the wrong direction. This is a direct nod to Dürer’s The Witch, in which her hair does the same thing to show how witches defy the laws of nature. Baldung also references Dürer’s work with the witch in the middle of the scene. She is tucked behind the seated witches, between a pillar of steam rising from their cauldron and a dead tree that has lost its leaves and branches. Tiny frogs and other ingredients are visible in the steam, indicating the brewing of a potion. Bones litter the ground below them as a reminder of the death and destruction that witches bring to society.

Baldung’s The Witches is a dark, gloomy print that calls upon the fear surrounding witchcraft in the 16th century. The chiaroscuro effect adds depth to the artwork making the figures look three-dimensional. The cuts on the woodblock would have to have been minuscule and extremely precise to create such a clear picture.

Many paintings by Evelyn De Morgan follow a medieval romanticist style made famous by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her work The Love Potion depicts a witch draped in a bright golden garment. She has a black cat at her feet, and she pours a potion into a chalice while two lovers embrace in the background. She does not depict the witch as an evil, ugly, old woman. Instead, this woman is beautiful with an enlightened mind. The books on the shelf next to her were written by great philosophical thinkers and scientists, including Paracelsus.

De Morgan grew up in a wealthy family and she was educated alongside her brother. She was incredibly dedicated to creating artwork from a young age and she resisted all efforts to turn her into a respectable lady in society. Her mother notably expressed her frustration by saying, “I wanted a daughter, not an artist.”

De Morgan did not let her family’s resistance deter her in her career. During her childhood, she turned to poetry to express herself. Her poems would carry the same themes that her paintings would later explore. In 1872, she entered the South Kensington National Art Training School. Her ideals differed significantly from those of the institution, which held opinions about what kind of art women should create. She moved on to Slade School of Art and became the first woman to enroll. In 1883, she met her husband, the ceramicist and novelist William De Morgan, and they became spiritualists. This significant change in her life is apparent in her work, with love and spirituality becoming prominent themes in her paintings.

Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Witches depicts four young women—three initiating the fourth into their witchcraft circle. The skull and bones below them on the ground, the women’s nudity, and the devil emerging from flames in the lower left corner are all indicators that these women are meant to be understood as witches. However, Dürer sets his witches apart from traditional depictions by posing the figures in an allusion to The Three Graces of classical antiquity. Their beauty warns contemporary viewers amidst a witch craze during the 16th century in Europe that evil does not always look ugly and off-putting. It warns against the trickery of witches and beautiful women, getting to the misogynistic core of the witch hunts and eliciting fear within the community due to its religious fervor.

2. El Aquelarre by Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya witnessed horrible events during his lifetime. He started his career cheerfully, creating tapestry cartoons and becoming an official court artist to the Spanish Royal family. However, after a bout of illness that left him permanently deaf and years of tragic war and death surrounding him, his artwork took a darker turn in his later years. El Aquelarre was created shortly before his artwork turned especially dark. It was made as a part of a series on the topic of witchcraft in which the recurring subject is the devil in the form of a large black goat. The Duke and Duchess of Osuna commissioned it for their Madrid estate.

At first glance, one might assume that Goya was criticizing women since the women in the painting are seen handing over their skeletal children to the devil. However, the meaning should not be taken at face value and it requires more context. Art historian Margarita Morena de las Heras explains that Goya emphasized the sense of lust in the scene with the crown of vines upon the goat’s head. The crown calls upon ancient Greek mythology, specifically Dionysus, the god associated with female-only sexual orgies. This allusion points towards the message of support for women who reject the strict requirements of patriarchy, such as belonging to one’s husband and motherhood, like the Duchess of Osuna.

The Duchess was known for her scandalous behavior, subverting patriarchal expectations, and being sexually liberated in a society that was very religious and superstitious. Goya could see that patriarchy was reinforced amongst the clergy especially, and for patriarchy to be firmly in practice, witches needed to be viewed as evil for subverting expectations. She named her new estate El Capricho, or The Folly, and it became a place for intellectuals to meet and discuss social reform.

In El Aquelarre, Goya brings forth a power in womanhood that is inhibited and distorted by superstitious beliefs within society at large. The artist was part of a group of progressives that sought to push Spain forward culturally and societally. When one demographic holds a form of oppression over another, any form of rebellion from the oppressed group will be viewed as a threat to the social order, hence the fear of witches amongst superstitious people who refuse to progress in society.

Francisco Goya’s Witches’ Flight was a part of the six-painting witchcraft series created for the Duchess of Osuna. Witches’ Flight is one of his spookier paintings, with a solid black background that isolates the scene and creates a feeling of being trapped in the work with the figures.

Three half-nude male figures levitate in the air, sucking the life force from their victim through his skin. The violence occurring is possibly inspired by the 1636 painting Saturn by Peter Paul Rubens, in which Saturn consumes his young son to prevent him from overthrowing him as an adult. Goya also covered this topic in one of his Black Paintings called Saturn Devouring his Son. However, Goya took a wilder approach to the figure of Saturn and instead showed him crunching the bloody body of his son with a gaping, unnatural mouth. In Saturn’s story, he traditionally swallows his children whole. Rubens and Goya rejected this aspect of the story and made a more horrifying image by creating visuals of intense and violent consumption.

Below the levitating figures, a man covers himself with a sheet and, in a panic, makes the sign of protection against evil. Likewise, another man has thrown himself flat upon the ground and covered his head to shield himself from the terrifying event playing out before him. There is a donkey in the bottom right corner of the canvas, yet the men do not go to it to escape. Instead, they cover their eyes. This is a direct parallel to what Goya was witnessing around him—a doomed society of outdated superstition that continued to cause violence because nobody did anything to change.

Most of Goya’s later paintings seem to have a societal message embedded in them, especially concerning criticism of society as a whole. Goya saw many things wrong with society, such as mass executions of rebels during wartime, politics that hindered cultural and humanitarian progress, the treatment of mentally ill patients at asylums, religious superstition that upheld problematic institutions such as the Spanish Inquisition, a lack of freedom for women in society, vanity amongst the upper classes, and other societal follies. All of these things were starkly opposite to his enlightened and romantic values, and as life dragged on, he became pessimistic in his approach to expression. As a result, many of his artworks are satirical responses to the problems he witnessed and could not change.