Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy 9789048557363

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Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy

Monsters and Marvels. Alterity in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds This series is dedicated to the study of cultural constructions of difference, abnormality, the monstrous, and the marvelous from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including the history of science and medicine, literary studies, the history of art and architecture, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, critical race studies, ecocriticism, and other forms of critical theory. Single-author volumes and collections of original essays that cross disciplinary boundaries are particularly welcome. The editors seek proposals on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to: the aesthetics of the grotesque; political uses of the rhetoric or imagery of monstrosity; theological, social, and literary approaches to witches and the demonic in their broader cultural context; the global geography of the monstrous, particularly in relation to early modern colonialism; the role of the monstrous in the history of concepts of race; the connections between gender and sexual normativity and discourses of monstrosity; juridical and other legal notions of the monstrous; the history of teratology; technologies that mimic life such as automata; wild men; hybrids (human/animal; man/machine); and concepts of the natural and the normal. Series editors Kathleen Perry Long, Cornell University, USA Luke Morgan, Monash University, Australia

Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy

Guy Tal

Amsterdam University Press

This book was published with the support of the Israel Science Foundation.

Cover illustration: Jusepe de Ribera (?), Lo stregozzo, detail, 1640s, oil on copper, 34.3 × 65.5 cm. Wellington Museum, London. Photo © Historic England / Bridgeman Images. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout 978 94 6372 259 9 isbn 978 90 4855 736 3 e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463722599 nur 654 © G. Tal / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2024 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

7

Acknowledgments 17 Introduction 19 1. Old Women under Investigation

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2. Chimerical Procession

81

The Drab Housewife and the Grotesque Hag

The Poetics of Inversion and Monstrosity

3. Priapic Ride

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4. Magical Metamorphoses

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5. A Visit from the Devil

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Gigantic Genitals, Penile Theft, and Other Phallic Fantasies

Variations on the Myths of Circe and Medea

Horror and Liminality in Caravaggesque Paintings

Epilogue 317 Bibliography 327 Index 363



List of Illustrations

Figure 1.

Jacopo de’ Barbari, A Naked Old Woman Riding on a Triton, 1495–1516, engraving, 10.2 × 11.7 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 2. Dosso Dossi, A Sorceress, ca. 1518–20, oil on canvas, 176 × 174 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: Bridgeman Images. Figure 3. Parmigianino, Old Woman with a Distaff, 1530s, pen and brown ink, 18.7 × 13.4 cm. Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth. Photo: Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images. Figure 4. Enea Vico da Parma, after Parmigianino, Old Woman with a Distaff, 1543–44, engraving, 22 × 14.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 5. Albrecht Dürer, Witch Riding on a Goat, ca. 1500, engraving, 11.7 × 7.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 6. Baccio Baldini, Hostanes, ca. 1455–65, pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, 32.6 × 22.6 cm., in The Florentine Picture Chronicle. London, British Museum. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum. Figure 7. The Innkeeper, woodcut, in Jacobus de Cessolis, Giuoco di Scacchi, Florence, 1493–94. MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Photo © MAK. Figure 8. Monogrammist DWF, after Enea Vico, Old Woman with a Distaff, ca. 1550–58, engraving, 19.8 × 17.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 9. Leonello Spada, Witch Pursuing after a Young Man, a letter of February 14, 1620, pen and black ink, 30.7 × 21 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. Figure 10. Orazio Borgianni, Potiphar’s Wife Lusting after Joseph, 1615, etching, copy of the fresco by the school of Raphael in the Vatican Logge, 15 × 18.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 11. Antonio Tempesta, Circe Changing Picus into a Bird, etching, 10.9 × 12.3 cm., in Metamorphoseon Ovidianarum, Amsterdam, 1606, 136. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 12. Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller, 1594, oil on canvas, 93 × 131 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 13.

Wenceslaus Hollar, after Leonardo da Vinci, A Young Man Caressing an Old Woman, 1646, etching, 17 × 13 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 14. Guercino, A Witch, Two Bats, and a Demon in Flight, pen and brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 11.7 × 25.7 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Photo © Art Gallery of Ontario / Purchased as a gift of the Trier-Fodor Foundation, 1986 / Bridgeman Images. Figure 15. Guercino, Three Bathers Surprised by a Monster, ca. 1620–25, pen and black ink, 16.2 × 25.7 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. Figure 16. Guercino, A Monstrous Animal and a Peasant, 1620–30, pen, ink, and brown wash, 15.1 × 22.2 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Photo © National Museums Liverpool / Bridgeman Images. Figure 17. Marcantonio Raimondi or Agostino Veneziano, after Giulio Romano (?), Lo stregozzo, 1520s, engraving, 30.3 × 64.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 18. Lo stregozzo, detail. Figure 19. Jusepe de Ribera (?), Lo stregozzo, 1640s, oil on copper, 34.3 × 65.5 cm. Wellington Museum, London. Photo © Historic England / Bridgeman Images. Figure 20. Michelangelo, The Creation of Sun, Moon, and Planets, 1508–12, fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Photo: Alinari / Bridgeman Images. Figure 21. Anonymous artist, after an engraving of Marcantonio Raimondi’s Position 9 from I modi (drawn by Giulio Romano), 1550s, woodcut, in “Toscanini volume,” f. B2, image size: 6 × 6.5 cm. Private collection, Milan. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images. Figure 22. Giulio Romano, Apollo and Diana, 1527, fresco. Camera del Sole e della Luna, Palazzo del Te, Mantua. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images. Figure 23. Giulio Romano and others, The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, 1519–24, fresco. Sala di Costantino, Vatican Palace, Rome. Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 24. Marcantonio Raimondi, after Raphael, The Massacre of the Innocents, ca. 1511–12, engraving, 28 × 42.6 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 25. Raphael, Fire in the Borgo, ca. 1514–17, fresco. Stanza dell’Incendio, Vatican Palace, Rome. Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 26. Aristotile da Sangallo, after Michelangelo’s cartoon, Battle of Cascina, 1542, oil on panel, 76.4 × 130.2 cm. Holkham Hall, Norfolk. Photo: By permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate / Bridgeman Images. Figure 27. Andrea Mantegna, Battle of the Sea Gods, ca. 1475–80, engraving from two plates, 28.5 × 43 cm. (left) and 28.6 × 37.5 cm. (right). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 28. Hans Baldung Grien, Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, 1510, chiaroscuro woodcut, 36.6 × 25.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 29. Master HFE, Marine Gods, ca. 1530s, engraving, 17.1 × 39.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 30. Accursio Baldi and Bastiano Marsili, after Raffaello Gualterotti, A Dragon Chasing after a Witch on a Chimera, in Feste nelle nozza del Serenissimo Don Francesco Medici gran duca di Toscana et della Sereniss sua consorte la Sig. Bianca Cappello, Florence, 1579, 21. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 31. Girolamo da Carpi (attr.), Landscape with Magic Procession, 1528, oil on canvas, 159 × 116 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo © Electa / Bridgeman Images. Figure 32. Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois Holding ‘Fillette’, 1982, photograph, 37.5 × 37.4 cm. Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. Figure 33. Anonymous, after Parmigianino, A Witch Riding on a Phallus, 1530s, etching, 14.5 × 9.7 cm. British Museum, London. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum. Figure 34. Bernard Picart, after Parmigianino, A Witch Riding on a Phallus, etching, second state, in Bernard Picart, Impostures innocentes, ou Recueil d’Estampes d’aprés divers peintres, Amsterdam, 1734, no. 12. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum. Figure 35. Jacopo Caraglio, after Parmigianino, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1526, engraving, 20.9 × 24 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 36. Parmigianino, Entombment of Christ, etching, 31.4 × 23.9 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 37. Parmigianino, after Marcantonio Raimondi’s Modi, Two Lovers, pen and brown ink, 13.1 × 15.2 cm. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images. Figure 38. Parmigianino, Lovers, etching and engraving, 14.7 × 10.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 39. Parmigianino, The Lower Part of Two Male Nudes, 1535–40, pen and brown ink, 19 × 8.9 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Figure 40. Anonymous artist, after an engraving of Marcantonio Raimondi’s Position 14 from I modi (drawn by Giulio Romano), 1550s, woodcut, in “Toscanini volume,” f. B4v, image size: 6 × 6.5 cm. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images. Figure 41. German School, Melancholy, woodcut, in the German Almanac, Augsburg, 1484. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 42. Three Female Witches on a Night Ride, woodcut, in Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg, Die Emeis, Strasbourg, 1517, 37v. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Figure 43. Harmen Jansz. Muller, after Maarten van Heemskerck, The Melancholy Temperament, 1566, engraving, 21.5 × 23.7 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 44. Giovanni Nicolò Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, Saturn, the Melancholic, and Mercenary Love with a Woman on Top, 1425–40, fresco. Great Hall, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua. Photo: Alinari Archives, Florence. Figure 45. Devil Seducing a Witch, woodcut, in Ulrich Molitor, De Lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, Basel, ca. 1495, 1v. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Figure 46. Woman Astride a Phallus, ca. 1400–1425, badge, tin and lead alloy, 2.5 × 2.2 cm. Musée Cluny, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Figure 47. Northern Italian, A Scene of Copulation, ca. 1480–1500, verso of a copper engraving plate, 15 × 22.4 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Figure 48. Roman amulet pendant, 2nd century CE, gold, pearls, and amethyst, 3.1 × 1.8 cm. The Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, Baltimore. Photo: James T. VanRensselaer.

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List of Illustr ations 

Figure 49.

Bernardino Detti, Madonna of the Pergola (detail), 1523, tempera on panel, 213 × 164 cm. Museo Civico, Pistoia. Photo: Alinari Archives, Florence. Figure 50. Francisco Goya, A Fine Teacher!, plate 68 of the Caprichos, 1799, etching and aquatint, 21 × 15 cm. Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Figure 51. Francisco Goya, We Must Be off with the Dawn, plate 71 of the Caprichos, 1799, etching and aquatint, 19.8 × 14.9 cm. Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Figure 52. Alessandro Allori and collaborators, Ulysses and Circe, ca. 1575–76, fresco. Cortile degli Imperatori, Palazzo Salviati, Florence. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY. Figure 53. Giovanni Stradano, Ulysses and Circe, 1562, fresco. Sala di Penelope, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY. Figure 54. Pseudo-Caroselli, Melancholic Circe, oil on canvas, 55 × 79 cm. Museo Statale d’Arte Medievale e Moderna, Arezzo. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. Figure 55. Pseudo-Caroselli, Circe and Melancholic Ulysses, oil on canvas, 55 × 79 cm. Museo Statale d’Arte Medievale e Moderna, Arezzo. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. Figure 56. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholic Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1645–55, pen and brown ink, 19.8 × 28 cm. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. Photo: Wolfgang Fuhrmannek. Figure 57. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholic Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1650–55, etching, 21.2 × 30.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 58. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholia, ca. 1645–46, etching, 21.6 × 11.2 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 59. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Vanitas/Melancholia, pen and brown ink and wash on buff paper, 22.2 × 34.3 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. Figure 60. Antonio Tempesta, Circe Transforming Ulysses’s Men into Swine, etching, 10.5 × 11.5 cm., in Metamorphoseon Ovidianarum, Amsterdam, 1606, 135. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Figure 61.

Pellegrino Tibaldi, Circe and Ulysses, 1550–51, fresco. Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images. Figure 62. Pellegrino Tibaldi, The Odyssey ceiling, 1550–51, fresco. Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images. Figure 63. Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici with Day and Night, 1524–34, marble. New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence. Photo © Nicolò Orsi Battaglini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 64. Tibaldi, Circe and Ulysses, detail. Figure 65. Annibale Carracci (attr.), Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1600, pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, over red chalk, on cream paper, 30 × 36.2 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. Figure 66. Girolamo Macchietti, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, ca. 1570–72, oil on panel, 152 × 83 cm. Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo © NPL – DeA Picture Library / G. Nimatallah / Bridgeman Images. Figure 67. René Boyvin, after Léonard Thiry, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, engraving, in Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or, Paris, 1563, plate 21. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 68. Jacopo Caraglio, after Perino del Vaga, Jupiter in the Guise of a Satyr Observing Antiope, 1527, engraving from Gli amori degli dei, 21.1 × 13.5 cm. Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts), Budapest. Figure 69. Francesco Morandini, Prometheus Receiving a Piece of Quartz from Nature, 1570, fresco. Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo © Alinari Archives / Art Resource, NY. Figure 70. Bernard Salomon, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, woodcut, in La Métamorphose d’Ovide figurée, Lyon, 1557, 78. Photo: Private collection / Bridgeman Images. Figure 71. Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, 1584, fresco. Sala di Giasone, Palazzo Fava, Bologna. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio / Electa / Antonio Guerra / Bridgeman Images. Figure 72. Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, woodcut, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Venice, 1538, 71v. Yale University Library.

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Figure 73.

Giovanni Battista Scultori (attr.), after Giulio Romano, Judith Beheading Holofernes, ca. 1540, engraving, 15.5 × 21.8 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna. Figure 74. Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Medea and Pelias’s Daughters, 1584, fresco. Sala di Giasone, Palazzo Fava, Bologna. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio / Electa / Sergio Anelli / Bridgeman Images. Figure 75. Anton Maria Vassallo, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, ca. 1641–45, oil on canvas, 51 × 68 cm. Corridoio Vasariano, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Figure 76. Johann Wilhelm Baur, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, etching, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Vienna, 1641. Photo: Wellcome Collection. Figure 77. Andries Stock (?), after Jacques de Gheyn II, The Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, ca. 1610, engraving, two plates, 43.5 × 65.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 78. Gioacchino Assereto, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, 1644, oil on canvas, 316 × 210 cm. Palazzo Ayrolo-Negrone, Genoa. Photo: Antonio Gesino Archive, Genoa. Figure 79. Gioacchino Assereto, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1644, oil on canvas, 318 × 210 cm. Palazzo Ayrolo-Negrone, Genoa. Photo: Antonio Gesino Archive, Genoa. Figure 80. Johann Wilhelm Baur, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, etching, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Vienna, 1641. The New York Public Library. Figure 81. Jusepe de Ribera, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1637, oil on canvas, 202 × 255 cm. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. Figure 82. Pseudo-Caroselli, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, ca. 1625, oil on canvas, 44 × 35 cm. Pinacoteca Civica Francesco Podesti, Ancona. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY. Figure 83. Angelo Caroselli, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, ca. 1625, oil on panel, 65 × 61 cm. Private collection (formerly Maurizio Canesso Gallery, Paris). Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. Figure 84. Pietro Paolini, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, early 1630s, oil on canvas, 70 × 93 cm. Cavallini-Sgarbi Collection, Ferrara. Photo: Maidun Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

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Figure 85.

Pieter van Laer, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, late 1630s, oil on canvas, 80 × 115 cm. Leiden Collection, New York. Photo: courtesy of The Leiden Collection. Figure 86. Witches Sacrificing an Infant to the Devil, woodcut, in Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, Milan, 1608. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Figure 87. The Devil Striking Witches out of the Book of Life, woodcut, in Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, Milan, 1608. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Figure 88. Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, ca. 1594, oil on canvas, 66 × 49.5 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo: Bridgeman Images. Figure 89. Agostino Tassi, Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft, ca. 1625, oil on canvas, 63.2 × 74.5 cm. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Figure 90. Titian, Saint Margaret and the Dragon, ca. 1565, oil on canvas, 209 × 183 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado. Figure 91. Caravaggio, Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas, 323 × 343 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Photo © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 92. Caravaggio, Medusa, ca. 1598, oil on canvas on wooden shield, diameter 55 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Bridgeman Images. Figure 93. Caravaggio, Taking of Christ, 1602–3, oil on canvas, 133.5 × 169.5 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Photo © Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York / Bridgeman Images. Figure 94. Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Photo: Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 95. Bernardo Strozzi, Calling of St. Matthew, ca. 1620, oil on canvas, 139 × 187 cm. Worcester Art Museum. Photo © Worcester Art Museum / Bridgeman Images. Figure 96. Nicolas Tournier, after Bartolomeo Manfredi, A Group of Revellers, ca. 1618–20, oil on canvas, 129 × 192 cm. Le musée de Tessé, Le Mans. Photo: Musée de Tessé / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 97.

Daniel Hopfer, Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women, ca. 1515, etching, 15.5 × 22.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 98. Giovanni Martinelli, Death Comes to the Banquet Table, ca. 1630, oil on canvas, 120.6 × 174 cm. New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo © Fine Art Images / Bridgeman Images. Figure 99. Giovanni Martinelli, Youth Surprised by Death, 1640s, oil on canvas, 60 × 80 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Figure 100. Follower of Salvator Rosa (signed FGS), Witchcraft Scene, 1674, oil on canvas, 45.8 × 68.2 cm. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images. Figure 101. Thomas Wijck, The Alchemist and Death, ca. 1660, oil on panel, 55 × 49 cm. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 20013 (56–003.32), Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston. Figure 102. Film poster of The Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971, directed by Paolo Cavara. Photo: Everett Collection. Figure 103. Pieter Pourbus, The Last Supper, 1548, oil on panel, 46.5 × 63 cm. Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Photo © Art in Flanders / Bridgeman Images. Figure 104. Albrecht Dürer, Four Witches, 1497, engraving, 19 × 13.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Figure 105. Giotto, The Pact of Judas, ca. 1303, fresco. Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Photo © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images. Figure 106. Ansano di Michele Ciampanti, Madonna del Soccorso, early sixteenth century, panel, 57 × 32 cm. Amedeo Lia Museum, La Spezia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Sailko. Figure 107. Salvator Rosa, Witch, ca. 1655, oil on canvas, 41.5 × 31 cm. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome. Figure 108. Salvator Rosa, Soldier, ca. 1655, oil on canvas, 42.5 × 34 cm. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome. Figure 109. Michelangelo, Cumaean Sibyl, 1508–12, fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Photo: Bridgeman Images. Figure 110. Label of Strega liqueur. https://www.delcampe.net/es/coleccionismo/etichette/altri-1/etichetta-vino-liquore-strega-galberti-benevento-724019203.html?utm_source=delcampe. net&utm_medium=push_auto&utm_campaign=labels/ other-1_CARTOLINERIA.

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Acknowledgments The book has benefited greatly from the generosity and support of a number of people. I am deeply indebted to Giles Knox, Mitchell Merback, Patricia Simons, and Gal Ventura for offering valuable criticism on early versions of some chapters. I also thank Rebecca Arenheim, Maria Fabricius Hansen, Antonio Gesino, Cristiano Giometti, Loredana Lorizzo, Mark McDonald, Anna Orlando, and Louise Rice for providing various material. I would like to express my gratitude to Shenkar College for granting me the research hours required to complete the book, and I thank my colleagues in the Unit of History and Philosophy at Shenkar, especially Michalle Gal, for their unflagging encouragement. Some sections of this book have been published previously. Part of chapter 1 appeared as “Saint or Sinner? Enea Vico’s Old Woman with a Distaff after a Drawing by Parmigianino,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 38 (2019): 143–57. Chapter 2 is slightly revised from “A Chimerical Procession: Invention, Emulation, and the Language of Witchcraft in Lo stregozzo,” Artibus et Historiae 78 (2018): 267–95. A section of chapter 4 was extracted from “Magical Monsters: Hybrids and Witchcraft in Early Modern Art,” Poetics Today 44 (2023), reproduced here with the permission of Duke University Press. Chapter 4 also incorporates material that was first presented in “Disbelieving in Witchcraft: Allori’s Melancholic Circe in the Palazzo Salviati,” Athanor 22 (2004): 57–65. A key argument in the epilogue is drawn from “Switching Places: Salvator Rosa’s Pendants of A Witch and A Soldier, and the Principle of Dextrality,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 30 (2011): 20–25. I thank the editors and publishers for their permission to reuse this material here. At Amsterdam University Press, I would like to thank Erika Gaffney, who efficiently guided the book through production, and the series editors Luke Morgan and Kathleen Perry Long for supporting this project. I am also grateful to Charles Zika for his meticulous reading and positive review of the book. My most profound indebtedness goes to Louise Chapman at Lex Academic for her superbly insightful editorial work. For their enduring friendship, encouragement, and interest in witches who ride on colossal phalluses and strike melancholic poses, I thank Efrat El-Hanany, Eli and Galit Gur, Tal Lanir, Liron Nathan, Kobi Perez, Sharon Stern, and Gal Ventura. Nathan at Café Meshulash in Tel Aviv made my writing process both enjoyable and social. I would also like to thank Hannah Segrave and Tania De Nile, my fabulous witch cohorts. My parents, Hannan and Hannah, nurtured my love of art and were confident in my career choices. To them, and to my brothers Asaf and Jonathan, I express my infinite gratitude and love. I thank from the bottom of my heart my life partner Stephane Bleuer for his unstinting support and willingness to listen, and for always being there for me. Finally, Belle-Belle gets a daily treat for being my faithful source of comfort and joy.

Introduction Witchcraft would seem an unexpected—even aberrant—subject matter for modern spectators to find within the rich artistic repertoire of Renaissance and Baroque Italy. How could the image of a loathsome old witch mired in necromantic depravity amidst a bevy of demonic creatures pertain to such a luminous cultural epoch, known best for intellectual prosperity, classical decorum, and ideal beauty? Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy seeks to explore the diverse ways in which Italian artists responded to and engaged with the early modern idea of witchcraft. The artworks examined throughout this book relate to such aberrational topics as diabolical worship, infanticide, skull necromancy, nightmares, delusions, psychopathology, hybridity, metamorphosis, and arrant sexual deviancy. Far from presenting witchcraft as an iconographical non sequitur in the artistic canon or as evidence of a latent “Anti-Renaissance,” this book sets out to show that witchy frescoes, paintings, prints, and drawings comported with—and indeed bore out the values of—the milieu’s artistic, cultural, and intellectual climate. Witchcraft is a subject matter that foregrounds the traditional bifurcated split in early modern Europe between Northern and Italian art. Against the ample stock of Northern scenes of witchcraft produced by Hans Baldung Grien, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jacques de Gheyn II, David Teniers II, and scores of other German, Dutch, and Flemish artists, the Italian record is significantly slimmer. Equally, pamphlets, broadsheets, and book illustrations propagating the details of witches’ deeds and executions across Northern Europe went unprinted in Italy excepting one illustrated treatise. It should be unsurprising, then, that the vast majority of scholarly publications and exhibitions devoted to witchcraft imagery are weighted towards the study of sixteenth-century German and seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch images, whose depictions predominate this iconographic niche.1 It was not until 1962 that early modern Italian images of witchcraft emerged as a subject of scholarly enquiry. This was when Eugenio Battisti included the chapter 1 The English-language monographs are Davidson, The Witch in Northern European Art, 1470–1750; Zika, Exorcising Our Demons; Hults, The Witch as Muse; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft; Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft; Roper, The Witch in the Western Imagination; Owens, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art; and De Nile, Fantasmagorie. Recent exhibition catalogues include Brinkmann, Witches’ Lust and the Fall of Man; Petherbridge, Witches and Wicked Bodies; and Vervoort, Bruegel’s Witches. For a valuable state of research, see Zika, “Images and Witchcraft Studies.”

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_intro

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“Nascita della strega” (Birth of the Witch) in his pivotal L’antirinascimento alongside others on previously unsung topics (such as automata, astrology, and monstrous statues). Through this, Battisti aspired to uncover the true, untold heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Italian art.2 Thereafter, art historians sought to examine the subject from myriad directions. Most critical attention has, unsurprisingly, been paid to Salvator Rosa, who produced no less than twenty witchcraft paintings and drawings, significantly excelling other Italian artists working within the genre.3 Ranked highly amongst individual works attracting keen scrutiny is Dosso Dossi’s Sorceress (ca. 1518–20) in the Borghese Gallery, Rome—a painting that raises questions regarding the protagonist’s identity, her enigmatic accouterments, and the nonstandard composition. 4 In a stimulating article, Patricia Simons pursues the role of classical literature in constructing early sixteenth-century Italian images of the witch.5 Overviews about the witch figure in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Florentine art and culture, and in Roman Baroque art attest to the topic’s richness and breadth.6 Scholars have also examined the witchcraft scenes of Northern artists painted during their Italian sojourns, including those by Joseph Heintz the Younger (Venice), Adam Elsheimer (Rome), and Jacob van Swanenburgh (Naples).7 Further studies about the engraving Lo stregozzo, the figures of Circe and Medea, and Angelo Caroselli’s witchcraft paintings will be expounded as we proceed. Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy constitutes the first inclusive, singleauthored book on representations of witchcraft in early modern Italian art. My first purpose is to expose the variety of Italian representations of witchcraft beyond Dosso’s Sorceress and Rosa’s œuvre. To this end, I shed new light on celebrated works, such as the engraving Lo stregozzo and Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Circe and Ulysses, but I 2 Battisti, L’antirinascimento, 138–57. Two short yet pioneering studies on the witch in Italian art are Peltzer, “Nordische und italienische Teufels und Hexenwelt”; and Catalano, “Oltre Salvator Rosa.” See also the assemblage of Italian images in Roma ermetica; and a brief survey of Italian images in Bethencourt, “Un univers saturé de magie l’Europe méridionale,” 182–86. 3 For a comprehensive catalogue of Rosa’s witchcraft works and a complete bibliography, see Segrave, “Conjuring Genius.” See also Tal, “Witches on Top,” 13–86; and Tal, “Switching Places.” 4 Macioce, “Figure della Magia,” 27–37; Wood, “Countermagical Combinations”; Morel, Mélissa, 232–56; and Fiorenza, Dosso Dossi, 101–26. See also chapter 1. 5 Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library.” 6 On Florence, see Bellesi, Diavolerie, magie e incantesimi; and Morel, Mélissa, 257–83. On Rome, see Anselmi, “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco.” 7 On Heintz, see D’Anza, “Uno Stregozzo”; Cannone and Gallavotti Cavallero, “Dipinti inediti,” 61–66; and Cannone and Gallavotti Cavallero, “Scene di genere,” 320–26. On Swanenburgh, see De Nile, Fantasmagorie. Elsheimer engraved a nocturnal witchcraft scene during his stay in Rome in 1600–1610; De Nile “‘Una carta finta di notte con una Maga.” Bartholomeus Spranger painted two sorcery scenes in the 1560s during his stay in Italy; Vervoort, Bruegel’s Witches, 99–100. For Leonaert Bramer’s witchcraft paintings in Naples and Rome, see Langdon, “Salvator Rosa,” 330, 340–41.

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also explore artworks that have thus far gone understudied for disparate reasons. For example, Gioachino Assereto’s Medea Rejuvenating Aeson is held inaccessibly in a private collection; three paintings of Witch Alarmed by a Devil have been contestably attributed to little-known artists; and Parmigianino’s Witch Riding on a Phallus dodged examination in part for being survived only by later copies, but also for being amongst the bawdier examples of the genre. Moreover, I proffer an original interpretation of images whose association with witchcraft has been overlooked or misunderstood, including Enea Vico’s engraving of an old woman spinning with a distaff, Leonello Spada’s sketch of a grotesque hag molesting a young man, and paintings of Circe and Medea. The second aim of Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy is to fashion new ways of reading witchcraft depictions through and beyond conventional iconography. By closely examining individual artworks, I explore the visual devices and pictorial language employed by artists to negotiate witchcraft beliefs and theories. Here, I escape the confines of asking what is represented and aim to elucidate how images represent. When we, for instance, reflect on the significance of the devil’s cropped display, a painting of a hapless witch fleeing a devil gives us more than a moral lesson about heresy—it speaks to the viewer’s emotional response and visual representations of the beyond. And the hackneyed portrait of a grotesque witch invites reflection in conjunction with the hybrid monster positioned beneath her. I argue that images of witchcraft—too intractable and ambiguous to really serve a didactic-moralizing function that either exalts the witches’ deeds or cautions against them—engage the beholder in an emotional and intellectual experience of seeing and interpreting witchcraft.

Witchcraft in Italy The prevailing conception of witchcraft amongst educated Europeans, including Italians, as a deleterious and diabolical practice crystallized from the early fifteenth century onwards.8 Following this concept, witches warranted condemnation on account of two primary transgressions. The first was practicing maleficia (harmful magic). This included slaying and injuring humans, thwarting fertility, meteorological interference, and milk poisoning. The second arena of transgression consisted in making pacts with the Devil, a demonic association that occasioned ideas that 8 On the elements of the so-called “cumulative concept” of witchcraft, see Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 32–51. Between 1460 and 1525, at least ten treatises denouncing witches were written by Italians; Monter, “Witch Trials in Continental Europe 1560–1660,” 44; and Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 33, 50n. 4. The regional variants are, to some extent, reflected in Italian treatises; Kieckhefer, “Mythologies of Witchcraft,” 99.

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would besmirch witchcraft as a kind of satanic cult.9 It was believed that witches, both male and female,10 congregated to honor the Devil on the sabbath, in gatherings known in Italian as striacum (from stria, a witch), cursus (course), gioco, and ludus (game).11 The favored haunt of Italian witches was the walnut tree just beyond the village of Benevento, around seventy kilometers northeast of Naples.12 Witches arrived to these assemblies on nocturnal journeys, terrestrial or aerial. On the sabbath, witches would evince their Devil-worship, obscenely kissing his buttocks, expressing their outright apostasy from Christianity by trampling a cross, and copulating with demons.13 Amongst other dastardly pursuits, witches would steal into houses to kill infants, either to suck their blood, extract their fat and blood for magic philters, munch on their corpses on sabbatical feasts, or sacrifice them to the Devil.14 These beliefs clearly do not constitute a single, definitive construct of witchcraft but instead synthesize several conceptions culled from Italian treatises, witch confessions, and trial records.15 Nevertheless, the outline above amply facilitates an understanding of the artworks discussed herewith. Indeed, the artworks in three chapters directly emerged from the concept of diabolical witchcraft. In two other chapters, I elaborate the scope of this concept by incorporating artworks of old women whose identity as witches is contested or witches from ancient myths whose characters served as prototypes in the making of the early modern witch. 9 These two components distinguish witchcraft from magic, which refers to a high practice that requires a certain amount of education, and from sorcery, which is not aided by the Devil and so can be beneficial. For various distinctions among these three terms, see Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 34; Bailey, “From Sorcery to Witchcraft,” 962; and Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 6–7. 10 The biased view that witchcraft was practiced by women alone has been corrected in recent scholarship; see chapter 5. 11 Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 35; Kieckhefer, “Mythologies of Witchcraft,” 97–98; Montesano, Caccia alle streghe, 80–85; and Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 43–45. These cursus and gioco are described in Italian trial records as beneficent gatherings, but they were interpreted by inquisitors as diabolical assemblies. 12 On Benevento, see, for example, Bartolommeo Spina’s Quaestio de strigibus (Venice, 1523), in Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, 1:390; Paulus Grillandus, Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis (Lyons, 1536), in Lea, 1:403–5; and Aretino, “La Cortigiana,” 84 (2.6). A map of Benevento showing witches dancing nearby an animalized walnut tree outside the village appears on the frontispiece of the Beneventan physician Pietro Piperno’s De magicis affectibus (On Magical Afflictions, 1635). 13 Some of these elements, for example, are confessed by an accused witch in Modena in 1539: Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 118–22. 14 For Italian witches accused of killing children, see Kieckhefer, “Avenging the Blood of Children,” 94–100; and Kieckhefer, “Mythologies of Witchcraft,” 87–90. 15 Richard Kieckhefer argues that any synthetic construct of witchcraft would undermine the existence of regional variants of witchcraft “mythologies” in Europe and even on the Italian peninsula. He demonstrates the different mythologies through fifteenth-century witch trials in Milan and Brescia in contrast to one in Perugia. Kieckhefer, “Mythologies of Witchcraft.”

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The artworks discussed here demonstrate the wide-ranging beliefs and ideas about witchcraft. In these images, we find the witch traveling to the sabbath, practicing skull necromancy, transforming men into beasts, riding atop monsters, creating toxic potions, sacrificing the young, and communing with the Devil. Importantly, the artworks showcased in Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy correspond to the heyday of witch-hunts on the Italian peninsula. However, since I found no visual evidence in the images themselves to connect them to witch-hunts, I prescinded from imposing any particular “context” on them (whether trials or executions).16 Nevertheless, it is certainly plausible that witch prosecutions influenced the inception and reception of some of the artworks discussed here. Some preliminary words, then, are in order with respect to the witch-hunts in the states that form present-day Italy. From the first accusation of witchcraft in 1385 to the last in 1723, men and women alike were tried for witchcraft (stregoneria) in both secular and ecclesiastical tribunals.17 These indictments were for either illicit magic or diabolical worship or both. Almost entirely in the northern regions of the Alpine territories, Lombardy, and Emilia, the first wave of witch prosecutions transpired between 1500 and 1530. When the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (known as the Roman Inquisition) was reconstituted in 1542 to repress Protestant “heresy,” the number of witch trials drastically declined. Following the abating of Protestantism, illicit magic became the most common heretical category handled by the Inquisition.18 However, in its second peak, between 1580 and 1640, the number of death sentences dwindled owing to more lenient treatment of witches. In total, the Italian witch-hunts were neither as expansive nor as devastating as those in the countries beyond the Alps. It is estimated that the total number of trials held by the Roman Inquisition for witchcraft, necromancy, love magic, and other forms of illicit magic was between 22,000 and 33,000. Of the approximately 45,000 executions of male and female witches across Europe, around 700 executions occurred on the Italian peninsula: about 70 percent occurred in the Alpine regions, 20 percent in the Po River valley, 16 One exception of an artwork directly associated with witch-hunts is a drawing sketched by Anthony van Dyck during his travels in Italy. Under the inscription “una striga in Palermo,” an old witch wearing a tall conical coroza decorated with a devil is condemned by the Spanish Inquisition in the auto-da-fé of May 19, 1624. McGrath, “Una striga in Palermo”; and Jaffé, “New Thoughts on Van Dyck’s Italian Sketchbook.” 17 The studies on Italian witch-hunts that I consulted are Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice; Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy; Di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria; Del Col, L’inquisizione in Italia; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell; Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice; Black, The Italian Inquisition, 231–54; and Montesano, Caccia alle streghe. For two valuable surveys on Italy, see Herzig, “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy”; and Duni, “Witchcraft and Witch Hunting.” On the Italian terms for witchcraft, including sortilegio and fattucheria, see Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 3–4. 18 Around 40 percent of the defendants were charged with illicit magic. In Naples, this became the most common charge; Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, 87–126.

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and another 10 percent south of the Emilia-Romagna region.19 The cities in which the artworks of Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy originated—Rome, Florence, Bologna, Parma, and Genoa—saw very few death penalties. As for the identity of the denounced, the commonplace stereotype finds little to recommend it historically. Indeed, some regional inquisitorial records indicate that incriminated elderly women were equal in number to young women, and in some cases accused males outnumbered women tout court.20 What, then, was the Inquisition’s attitude towards witchcraft painting? PostTridentine prohibitions regarding the content and role of art reverberate in Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti’s 1582 Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, published in Bologna. He forbade pictures showing “necromancy, augury, sortilege … magical arts, incantations, images with unknown signs, binding with herbs, bones of the dead, braided hair, and similar observances reprobated in the canons.”21 It appears that this prohibition was rarely enforced. Indeed, the only known case of banning witchcraft paintings concerns Jacob van Swanenburgh, Rembrandt’s first teacher. In 1608, Swanenburgh was arrested by the Neapolitan Inquisition for hanging a large painting of cavorting witches and demons outside his workshop in one of Naples’ busiest districts. Incensed with this public exhibition of such an egregious and heretical scene, the inquisitors interpreted the passersby’s interest not as a natural curiosity for fanciful scenes but as a condemnable taste for witchcraft.22 Away from the prying public eye, however, cardinals, noblemen, and merchants in Venice, Genoa, Rome, and Naples enriched their private collections with the witchcraft paintings of Italian and Northern European artists.23

19 For the number of prosecutions and executions across Europe, see Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 23. For the figures in Italy, see Duni, “Witchcraft and Witch Hunting,” 86. 20 Between 1550 and 1650 men amounted to almost 40 percent of those accused of illicit magic by the Venetian Inquisition, and two-thirds of the defendants in Naples. Monter, “Women and the Italian Inquisitions,” 80; and Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 226. For young and old women accused of witchcraft, see Martin, 228. 21 Paleotti, Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, 169. 22 Swanenburgh’s (evidently convincing) defense led to his full exoneration. His interrogation is transcribed in Amabile, “Due artisti ed uno scienziato,” 490–97. For a compelling analysis of Swanenburgh’s defense, see De Nile, “Spoockerijen,” 195–201. 23 The Genoese art collector Giovanni Carlo Doria purchased a “stregaria” by Bartholomeus Spranger, and the Grand Constable of the Kingdom of Naples Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna possessed as many as four paintings of “Stregoneria,” probably by Bruegel, and another by Pietro Testa. The Roman banker and merchant Carlo de Rossi was a keen collector of Salvator Rosa’s works, including canvases portraying scenes of witchcraft. In Venice, the chronicler Giovanni Nani owned a “Strega et un mago che fanno strigarie” by Pietro della Vecchia, and the publisher Giovanni Battista Combi possessed an “Una scena di stregoneria” by Joseph Heintz the Younger. See Getty Provenance Index, s.v. “witchcraft.” On Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s ownership of a witchcraft painting, see chapter 5.

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The Italian Image of the Witch Walter Stephens asserts that “the witch was a hybrid figure,” a creature contrived from activities that had previously been ascribed to societal pariahs and heretics.24 Heterogeneity was specifically ascribed to the Italian witch by two of the celebrated nineteenth-century writers whose work glorified the Italian Renaissance. For his part, Jacob Burckhardt in The Civilization of the Renaissance Italy (1860) sought to reconcile the apparent contradiction of witchcraft with his appraisal of Italy as the cradle of humanism. He did this by holding to account two other cultures for the practice of witchcraft in Italy: ancient Rome and contemporary Germany.25 According to Burckhardt, ancient superstitions proliferated in the Renaissance thanks to the support of Italian humanists, primarily through astrology and magic, but also through “the primitive and popular form” of witchcraft.26 This “classical” form of witchcraft, which was especially perpetrated in the region of Perugia, grew exacerbated at the end of the fifteenth century as witch-hunts erupted in the German territories. While the German conception of witchcraft, which included the witches’ aerial journey, copulation with the incubus, and malicious magic, managed to exert influence in the northern regions of Italy, it did not extend to central and southern Italy. There, another kind of witchcraft, corresponding to a different set of ideas, had already taken its hold. This purely “Italian” witch, according to Burckhardt, was characteristically benign, seeking to enhance people’s pleasures through love magic. Burckhardt’s attempt to classify witches into Italian and German has been criticized as biased: Italian trial records and treatises describe witches besmirched with diabolical features that Burckhardt would have considered German.27 More accurately, John Addington Symonds wrote in Renaissance in Italy (1875–86) that the Italian witch “combined the Locusta [a notorious poison maker] of ancient Rome with the witch of medieval Germany.” Not unlike her German counterpart, Symonds’s strega is “a loathsome creature” expert in magical poisons and claiming to operate magic by the aid of devils.28 The Italian witch images in Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy furthermore evince eclecticism, taking inspiration from the broadest of sources, including 24 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 322. On the origins of witchcraft beliefs in medieval heretical sects, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons. 25 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance Italy, 356–80. 26 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance Italy, 368. 27 Baroja, The World of the Witches, 99–101; Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 32–33; Herzig, “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy,” 258–60; and Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 278–79. 28 Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 185. However, he also distinguishes between the German-type Alpine witch and the classical-type Perugian witch, a distinction that resonates in Kieckhefer’s varying mythologies of witchcraft in these two territories.

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contemporary Italian art and culture, Greco-Roman literature, and Northern European imagery. The classical tradition played a central role in the conceptualization and reinforcement of early modern beliefs about witchcraft, primarily by peddling the idea that women are predisposed to its practice.29 This is corroborated by the ancient derivation of two common terms for a witch in early modern Italian: strega and stria (the former remains the word for “witch”). These terms allude to a creature in the Roman tradition called a strix or striga, which is variously described as a bird or a woman shapeshifted into a bird who emits the high-pitched vocalizations of a screeching owl and who snatches infants from their cradles at night and drinks their blood.30 The classical witch finds expression in the book in two ways. First, images of unspecified witches carry allusions through certain motifs and visual forms of rhetoric to ancient witches such as Lucan’s Erichtho and Horace’s Canidia.31 Second, the tremendous impact of the classical tradition on early modern beliefs about witchcraft is explored in a chapter devoted to the enchantresses Circe and Medea, whose fables feature prominently in Italian art. I intend to show how the mythological paintings are linked, implicitly or intentionally, to early modern ideas about witchcraft. Italian artists also drew direct inspiration from Northern European images of witchcraft, including prints by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien, illustrated books of classical poems and witchcraft treatises, and paintings of Northern artists made during their Italian sojourns. In some cases, I address comparable aspects between Italian and Northern images not necessarily to argue for direct influence but to pinpoint those concepts that evolved simultaneously yet independently in different European regions, just as regional conceptions of witchcraft coincided on certain beliefs.32 While, therefore, a book dedicated to the witch in Italian art may 29 Marina Montesano explores the impact of Greek and Latin texts on the burgeoning concept of witchcraft in Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. 30 On strix in classical literature, see Oliphant, “The Story of the Strix.” Another word for “witch” was lamia, a monster sometimes described in ancient and medieval texts as a night demon, ghost, or equine-legged woman, who slaughters and devours infants at night, and tempts attractive men. Šedinová, “La raffigurazione della ‘Lamia.’” See also Hutton, The Witch, 69–71, 194; and chapter 2. Other terms for a witch include malefiche, masche, fattucchiere, and maliarde; Black, The Italian Inquisition, 295n. 11. For the terms for a witch in classical texts, see Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag,” 41–42; and Paule, Canidia, 8–14. 31 Margaret Sullivan argued that Dürer and Baldung’s works of witches were not a direct reaction to witch prosecutions and witch manuals but emerged solely from ancient literature. Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien.” It is hard to believe that viewers of these artworks did not also consider the newly evolving idea of the witch. 32 Two prints were copied (in reverse) by Italians: Dürer’s Witch Riding on a Goat was engraved by Benedetto Montagna around 1507; Zucker, The Illustrated Bartsch, 432, cat. no. 52. Baldung’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath was produced as a color woodcut by Lucantonio de’ Uberti in 1516 and Giovanni Francesco Camocio in the 1560s; Zdanowicz, “A Note on Salvator Rosa,” figs. 2–3.

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imply some kind of idiosyncrasy or distinctiveness, her figure is far from alienated from her European cohorts. Heterogeneity is moreover apparent in view of the visual evidence. The figure of the witch is so dynamic within Italian art that no single depiction of the Italian witch can be described as representative. The visual stereotype of the witch as an ugly old woman made only few, albeit remarkable, appearances in Italian art before her f igure’s recurrent depiction by Salvator Rosa. Even the two old witches in the relatively contemporary images discussed in chapters 2 and 3 are dissimilar: one is manic and denuded, while the other is accoutered and cheerless. Adding visual diversity to depictions of the witch figure are the young witch and the male witch (stregone); both make an appearance in the book, especially in chapters 4 and 5.

The Challenge of Interpretation Rather than rationalizing witchcraft or being tempted to explain it away, scholars have long conceived of witchcraft as “a cultural phenomenon with a reality of its own.”33 A groundbreaking step towards such an understanding of witchcraft was taken in Stuart Clark’s seminal Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. There, he explores the relationship between the tenets of witchcraft and other areas of early modern thought, as well as the language systems through which witchcraft authors promulgated their theories. These included forms of symbolism, classification, different lexicons, metaphor, narrative facets, and rhetorical devices.34 Of those scholars who have examined witchcraft imagery using this approach, the cultural historian Charles Zika is the most prominent and prolific. Zika very influentially investigates the cultural meanings of witchcraft images by analyzing the plethora of visual codes and themes that artists developed and adapted with the intention of clarifying and interpreting the concept of witchcraft and its visual and ideological connotations, including, but not limited to, the cauldron, the ride, death, cannibalism, and moral disorder.35 Throughout this book, I elaborate upon Zika’s pioneering insights, including his remarks about gender reversal within witchcraft. I am, nevertheless, more interested in the significations of the more unusual and less explored visual strategies that artists employed in composing these works, such as the rarely seen gargantuan phallus and frame-elided devil. 33 Clark’s introduction to Languages of Witchcraft, 6. 34 “Language” is the first section in Clark, Thinking with Demons. See also Clark, “Introduction,” 9. 35 Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft.

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Moreover, and indeed at variance with Zika’s approach (which hails from traditional visual culture), art-historical concerns take precedence in my analysis. A central issue in my study is artistic invention and imitation. Claudia Swan and Linda Hults have argued forcefully that artists saw witchcraft as affording the perfect framework to exercise their imagination whilst promoting their inventive prowess.36 Endorsing their view, I contend that artists recognized an opportunity in the subject of witchcraft not only to exercise their imagination but also to vaunt their imitative and emulative skills by hinging on works of their peers and predecessors. Along with the inventive and imitative forms of artistic practice, my study foregrounds aesthetic motivations, artistic theories and practices, problems of authorship and dating, and, above all, hermeneutic readings of the works. In Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy, I examine the tight interconnections between content and visual rhetoric. Artists codified the demonic world of witchcraft through various signs—especially inversion, hybridity, and liminality—while negotiating a rich gamut of theoretical concerns: varieties of magic, witches’ powers and demeanor, illusory mechanisms in magic, devils’ corporeality and appearance, medical explanations, and antidotes against witchcraft. While many of these issues are discussed in demonological treatises, some of these texts, especially those written in Latin, were probably unfamiliar to the artists and viewers. However, these texts provide contemporary viewers and readers with access to the intellectual framework of witchcraft that the erudite spectator of the time would also have known through book learning and hearsay. In utilizing these texts, my intention is not, therefore, to confine the images to instructive documents or textual equivalencies of beliefs and theories. Rather, I intend to plot some discursive paths that can provide the erudite viewer with critical points of departure in the artworks’ interpretation. While we may decode the systems of symbols and motifs that typify the realm of witchcraft, some of these aspects shall inevitably remain ambiguous—and for good reason. Any depiction of witchcraft is inherently indecisive. This is, not least, thanks to the inclusion of mutable substances, cryptic procedures, phantasmic visions, demonic illusions, and delusions—a veritable catalogue of misdirection designed to obfuscate the mechanism and purpose of magic, the chronology of events, and the boundaries between reality and illusion. Moreover, the witch’s identity, appearance, and intentions were known to be inconstant, flighty, wily, and inveigling to the extent that the French judge in witch trials Pierre de Lancre implores us to read his 1612 treatise as “one discourse that bears as its title the inscription A Portrait of the Inconstancy of Witches.”37 Accordingly, the artworks 36 Hults, The Witch as Muse, xiv, 34–39; and Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 14, 195–96. 37 De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 5.

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stir multivalent readings in particular ways. We shall see, for instance, how the depiction of a magic procedure at a certain moment calls its expected outcome into doubt, how innovative monsters bereft of a fixed referent foster competing meanings, and how partial information excites the viewer’s imagination and occasions ambiguous identities. Indeed, it is this interpretative leeway that can be discovered in uncanny, mutable depictions of witchcraft, thereby reflexively reinforcing its identity as an enigmatic enterprise. On my analysis, which is less concerned with what artists intended by their artworks and whether their meanings are formally circumscribed, I am interested in what interpretative routes would have been available to their intended audiences as afforded and encouraged by their work’s formal semantics. To this extent, my approach is informed by Joseph Koerner’s hermeneutical reading of Hans Baldung Grien’s witchcraft images, whereby the contradictions and uncertainties of subjectivity intermingle in an unsettling, and ultimately unsettled, process of interpretation.38 Despite the limitations of reception theory, confining the meaning of an artwork to authorial intention risks stunting and eviscerating the artwork’s full semantic fecundity, thereby deracinating it of myriad nuances.39 In this context especially, clinging to an encoded authorial intent would frustrate and conflict with the very core of witchcraft, whose essential imprecision necessarily implants semantic possibility, as (generously) does its depiction. The question about the reality of witchcraft—not from our modern perspective but as a subject of early modern debates—grows animated through visual representation. Scholars are today divided on the question of whether images substantiate the existence of witches on the premise that “seeing is believing”40 or dissuade it by dint of their whimsical content. 41 My reply would be that, unless the image is accompanied by some explanatory text that serves to adjudicate on the issue, a gullible or skeptical stance must be visually evinced. 42 In other cases, which account for the majority of the works examined here, the beholder would be predisposed to entertain various scenarios that vacillate between plausible and phantasmagorical:43 Does the image portray what the witches, victims, or 38 See the chapter “The Crisis of Interpretation” in Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 317–62. 39 On reception theory, see Kemp, “The Work of Art and Its Beholder”; and Shearman, Only Connect. 40 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 630–33; and Stephens, Demon Lovers, 123. 41 Claudia Swan sees Jacques de Gheyn II’s works as pictorial manifestations of theories that present witchcraft as the product of deluded imaginations; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 123–24, 138, 154–94. See also Zika, “The Cruelty of Witchcraft,” 45. 42 Tal, “Skepticism and Morality”; and chapter 4. 43 Clark asserts that “in witchcraft matters belief and doubt … varied according to specific issues and were spread out along a continuous spectrum of reactions to witchcraft phenomena.” Clark, Thinking with Demons, 182.

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bystanders believe they see, or are we being invited into an objective reality, that is, to take the depiction at face value? If the image is fictive, does it then count as an illusion or delusion of the senses caused by the devil or as a product of the witch’s delusionary mind? Could the image comprise aspects of the real and the illusory, albeit with blurred boundaries? An interrelated challenge lies in the determination of the response that a witchcraft scene is apt to have on a spectator. On Richard Kieckhefer’s account, magic sits at a crossroads between humor and seriousness. He remarks that “it is seldom easy to know for sure whether a medieval audience would have been amused or shocked by such material.”44 One may argue that an image may have shocked the credulous and amused the skeptical. Subjectivity, however, only gets us so far. For example, Swanenburgh’s witchcraft paintings were suspected by the Inquisition as being heretical. In his defense, however, the artist maintained that he devised the works out of sheer pleasure and as a joke, a claim that his interrogators must have believed given his exoneration. 45 While scholars have pointed out that early modern artists, like poets and playwrights, appreciated both the facetious and horrifying potential of witchcraft qua subject matter, they have only rarely explained the means through which these images found subjective, emotional traction. 46 I address this lacuna through my examination of the artworks. An issue that cannot be ignored, and one to which I diligently attend in this book, is gender. Although men could also be victims of witch-hunts, Italian artists—like their Northern European counterparts—typically portrayed the witch as female. Linda Hults’s The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe offers a pivotal study on the figure of the witch from a gendered perspective. Despite the various persuasive arguments in the scholarship that misogyny was not the only—nor even the central—motive for witch-hunts, Hults’s argument is predicated on the idea that images of witchcraft were intensely misogynistic. 47 Her primary contention is that the figure of the female witch, who reifies the dangerous potential of imagination and fantasy, was adopted by male artists to flaunt their productive 44 Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 1–2. 45 Amabile, “Due artisti ed uno scienziato,” 61–62: “Perche anco me imaginava di dare piacere alle gente che lo vedessero … perche questo io lo teneva per una burla et l’hò fatto per fare ridere le gente” (because I imagined myself giving pleasure to the people who saw it … because this was what I kept for a joke and I did it to make people laugh). 46 Baroja, The World of the Witches, 216–18; Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien”; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 134; and Roper, The Witch in the Western Imagination, 27. Among the humorous aspects that scholars have identified in witchcraft imagery are the upside-down world shared by the demonic and the carnivalesque, and the witch’s grotesque body. On these aspects, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 47 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 10–15.

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and reasoned use of these faculties. 48 Endorsing Hults’s view, my focus here is on the different strategies adopted by artists to underscore the witch’s female sex as the source of both her powers and her depravity. At the most basic level, artists emphasized a binary conceptualization of gender by portraying female witches who enchant, dominate, seduce, attack, deride, emasculate, and castrate male victims. Artists further inverted the figure of the virtuous woman and overturned ideas relating to normative sexual roles by drawing on established topoi such as the Power of Women and the Ill-Matched Couple. Moreover, they used their art to offer symbolic analogies between the witch and the monster, and also negotiated the role of gender in demonological discourses. Although representations of the witch oscillated between overtly humorous and more somber depictions, the witch emerges in these artworks as a cipher for patriarchal anxieties and fantasies about women. A predominant motif that stirs ambivalence and throws the beholder into perplexity is the monstrous creature. Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy probes a bizarre cluster of monsters: a witch-bestridden giant, tailed phallus; a morphologically unprecedented chimera of two avian heads and a skeletal leonine body; and the clawed extremities of an unseen devil who penetrates onto the pictorial scene. Such hybrids as these have been paid scant critical attention. This is perhaps because it is tempting to see them merely as nominal demonic agents. However, to view these hybrids only through an iconographic lens is to ignore those formal and compositional aspects that distinguish one creature from another, and to undermine the crucial issues of intention, production, and reception. An important contribution in the right direction was made by Hults and Swan, who saw composite monsters as evidencing artists’ inventive prowess and capacity for fantasia. 49 While I elaborate on this critical path in the book, I depart from their approach in two ways. First, I do not treat all hybrids as a unif ied group; instead, I aim to attend to their individuality. Second, I extend and expand the monster’s interpretative possibilities, as well as the spectator’s experience thereof. Monsters are semantically heavy beings. Their interpretability is even signaled etymologically by the hypothesized Latin derivation from the verbs monstrare, to show, and monere, to warn.50 As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen proclaims in the first of his seven compelling theses on the subject, “The monstrous body is pure culture. A construct and a projection, the monster exists only to be read: the monstrum is etymologically ‘that which reveals,’ ‘that which warns,’ a glyph that seeks a 48 Hults, The Witch as Muse, xiv, 14–16, 36–39. 49 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 47–52; and Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 154–56. 50 Salisbury, The Beast Within, 144; and Verner, The Epistemology of the Monstrous, 2–7.

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hierophant.”51 On Cohen’s cogent analysis, the act of reading recognizes the essential role of the viewer as, fundamentally, an interpreter of monsters, acknowledging the vast range of reactions—from the visceral to the cerebral—that monsters are apt to provoke. Intending to broaden and problematize the meaning of the monster, I propose to examine the dynamics of invention and convention surrounding morphology; their narrative, figurative, and symbolic potential; their cultural and demonological significations; the devil’s variable appearance and liminality; and the tension between hybridity and metamorphosis. In some cases, the monster reveals itself as the key to unlock the meaning of the entire scene, while in others, it serves as a quasi-autonomous site of reflection on subjects related to witchcraft, creativity, and imagination. The artworks examined in Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy ultimately defy reduction to a comprehensive narrative, a pellucid statement of beliefs, a firm moral or didactic lesson, or an unequivocal stance towards witch persecutions. Rather, these images invite interpretative multiplicity that results from, and emblematizes, the perplexing experience of trying to make sense of manifestations of witchcraft. Ostensively, this book cultivates and perpetuates the dialectic between the coherent and the ambiguous as upheld and exemplified in the images that comprise its study.

Structure of the Book This study offers a series of five case studies, focusing respectively on a witch stereotype, two individual works, an artistic genre, and a particular iconography. Although arranged in roughly chronological order, the chapters neither coalesce into a sequential narrative nor do they offer a linear survey on the subject. The first three chapters focus on old witches that feature in prints and drawings that, barring one, fall between 1520 and 1550; the following two chapters consider young witches of both sexes portrayed in paintings and frescoes from 1550 to 1650. We begin our study with the question of who a witch is. In chapter 1, “Old Women under Investigation: The Drab Housewife and the Grotesque Hag,” the viewer assumes the role of an inquisitor tasked to scrutinize the woman’s body to locate the markers of witch-hood. An analysis of two different images of old women—Enea Vico’s engraving of a dull housewife spinning with a distaff and Leonello Spada’s sketch of a furious grotesque hag—confounds our assumption that the former is not a witch while the latter is. 51 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 4. On the interpretive perspective of monsters, see Huet, Monstrous Imagination; Knoppers and Landes, Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities; Williams, Monsters and their Meanings; and Morgan, The Monster in the Garden.

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Each of the two subsequent chapters examines a print of an old witch on her nocturnal ride; one witch flagrantly presides over a procession of monsters and naked men; the other sits, dejected, atop a gigantic phallus. Chapter 2, “Chimerical Procession: The Poetics of Inversion and Monstrosity,” forges an interpretation of the engraving Lo stregozzo. Tentatively attributed to Giulio Romano, the Stregozzo constitutes a self-conscious display of artistic creativity. Various figures in the print connote, ideologically and pictorially, both the artist and the witch. Chapter 3, “Priapic Ride: Gigantic Genitals, Penile Theft, and Other Phallic Fantasies,” explores another image that renders the disorderly realm of witchcraft inverted, monstrous, and mutable, while at the same time bawdy. I unpack Parmigianino’s Witch Riding on a Phallus as a multilayered commentary on witchcraft lore and praxis by reading the graphic phallus as both literal and figurative, real and fantastic. Baroque art was especially fecund as the evolutionary ground for unconventional themes and paintings of dramatic and violent witchcraft scenes. To this end, chapter 4, “Magical Metamorphoses: Variations on the Myths of Circe and Medea,” delves into the fables of Circe transforming men into beasts and Medea rejuvenating Aeson. An examination of a select cluster of paintings and frescoes reveals that artists such as Alessadro Allori, Pellegrino Tibaldi, and Anton Maria Vassallo prescinded from making clear-cut displays of these myths, instead preferring to suspend, negate, or ridicule the magic performed by Circe and Medea. In chapter 5, “A Visit from the Devil: Horror and Liminality in Caravaggesque Paintings,” the prevailing stereotype of the omnipotent, malignant witch is confounded in an oft-neglected group of four paintings that show the witch (who is either male or female) being alarmed by the devil’s arrival. It is argued that the cropped figure of the devil constitutes the paintings’ emotional and intellectual apogee. The epilogue recaps some of the critical threads that run throughout the book by way of a brief examination of Salvator Rosa’s pendants Witch and Soldier. Collecting these artworks under one title does not thereby classify them under a definitive, unified “genre” of witchcraft. A cursory glance across the reproductions in the book reveals that they are utterly diverse. Indeed, we do not find a univocal pictorial definition of a witch from this period, nor is there a standard witchcraft “scene.” Moreover, the Italian artworks are dispersed over a long time span with intermittent gaps and a real paucity of material interconnections between them. More positively, however, the present study does explore how artworks that varied in form, subject matter, scale, medium, and mode of representation nevertheless converge on the ideas and beliefs relating to the new conception of witchcraft. For example, then, while there are no visual nor iconographical affinities between the Homeric sorceress Circe transforming Ulysses’s comrades into animals and a crone astride a colossal phallus, the two works do revolve around kindred themes and discourses: the veracity of transformations, the boundaries between the real and

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the fantastic, and the delusions of the witch. The case studies presented here can stand autonomously but also enjoy rich interrelations. Altogether, they constitute a captivating quilt of images that sheds light on the critical role that art played in early modern Italy in developing, complicating, and problematizing notions surrounding witchcraft qua phenomenon, and, eventually, casting our understanding and perception of Italian Renaissance and Baroque art into fanciful and bizarre new colors.

Works Cited Primary Sources Amabile, Luigi. “Due artisti ed uno scienziato: Gian Bologna, Jacomo Svanenburch e Marco Aurelio Severino nel S.to officio napoletano.” Atti della reale accademia di scienze morali e politiche 24 (1891): 433–503. Aretino, Pietro. “La Cortigiana.” In Renaissance Comedy: The Italian Masters, ed. and intro. Donald Beecher, 1:99–204. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. de Lancre, Pierre. On the Inconstancy of Witches: Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons. Trans. Harriet Stone and Gerhild Scholz Williams. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Getty Provenance Index. https://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path=pi/ pi.web. Lea, Henry Charles. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft. 3 vols. Ed. Arthur C. Howland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939. Paleotti, Gabriele. Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images. Ed. Paolo Prodi, trans. William McCuaig. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2012.

Secondary Sources Anselmi, Alessandra. “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco nella Roma barocca: Tra ‘crisi della presenza’ e letteratura latina.” In Barocco a Roma: La meraviglia delle arti, ed. Mariagrazia Bernardini and Marco Bussagli, 171–77. Milan: Skira, 2015. Bailey, Michael D. “From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages.” Speculum 76 (2001): 960–90. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Baroja, Julio Caro. The World of the Witches. Trans. Nigel Glendinning. 1964. Reprint, London: Phoenix Press, 2001. Battisti, Eugenio. L’antirinascimento. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962.

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Bellesi, Sandro. Diavolerie, magie e incantesimi nella pittura barocca fiorentina. Florence: Giovanni Pratesi Antiquario, 1997. Bethencourt, Francisco. “Un univers saturé de magie l’Europe méridionale.” In Magie et sorcellerie en Europe: Du moyen age à nos jours, ed. Robert Muchembled and Bengt Ankarloo, 159–94. Paris: A. Colin, 1994. Black, Christopher F. The Italian Inquisition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Brinkmann, Bodo, ed. Hexenlust und Sündenfall: Die seltsamen Phantasien des Hans Baldung Grien / Witches’ Lust and the Fall of Man: The Strange Fantasies of Hans Baldung Grien. Frankfurt am Main and Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2007. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance Italy. Trans. S. G. C. Middlemore. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Burke, Peter. “Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and his Strix.” In The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo, 32–52. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Cannone, Marco, and Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero. “Dipinti inediti e nuove attribuzioni per Joseph Heintz il giovane.” Storia dell’arte 139 (2014): 48–83. Cannone, Marco, and Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero. “Scene di genere con nature morte, soggetti sacri e stregozzi di Joseph Heintz il Giovane e della sua bottega.” Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell’arte 73 (2018): 295–338. Catalano, Dora. “Oltre Salvator Rosa: Magia e demonio in alcuni dipinti romani del Seicento.” In La città dei segreti: Magia, astrologia e cultura esoterica a Roma (XV – XVIII), ed. Fabio Troncarelli, 96–100. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985. Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Clark, Stuart. “Introduction.” In Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture, ed. Stuart Clark, 1–18. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3–25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Cohn, Norman. Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom. Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. D’Anza, Daniele. “Uno Stregozzo di Joseph Heintz il Giovane.” Arte in Friuli, Arte a Trieste 25 (2006): 13–18. Davidson, Jane P. The Witch in Northern European Art, 1470–1750. Freren: Luca Verlag, 1987. Del Col, Andrea. L’inquisizione in Italia: Dal XII al XXI secolo. Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 2006. De Nile, Tania. “Spoockerijen: Tassonomia di un genere della pittura nederlandese del XVII secolo.” Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2013. De Nile, Tania. “‘Una carta finta di notte con una Maga, e con atti d’incantesimi’: Copie e derivazioni da un perduto originale di Adam Elsheimer.” Storia dell’arte 30 (2018): 99–108.

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De Nile, Tania. Fantasmagorie: Streghe, demoni e tentazioni nell’arte fiamminga e olandese del Seicento. Rome: Officina Libraria, 2023. Di Simplicio, Oscar. Autunno della stregoneria: Maleficio e magia nell’Italia moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005. Duni, Matteo. Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy. Florence: Syracuse University in Florence, 2007. Duni, Matteo. “Witchcraft and Witch Hunting in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy.” In The Routledge History of Witchcraft, ed. Johannes Dillinger, 81–93. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2020. Emison, Patricia. “Truth and Bizzarria in an Engraving of Lo stregozzo.” Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 623–36. Fiorenza, Giancarlo. Dosso Dossi: Paintings of Myth, Magic, and the Antique. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Herzig, Tamar. “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack, 249–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Huet, Marie-Hélène. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hults, Linda C. The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Hutton, Ronald. The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017. Jaffé, David. “New Thoughts on Van Dyck’s Italian Sketchbook.” Burlington Magazine 143 (2001): 614–24. Kemp, Wolfgang. “The Work of Art and Its Beholder: The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception.” In The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective, ed. Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, 180–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kieckhefer, Richard. “Avenging the Blood of Children: Anxiety over Child Victims and the Origins of the European Witch Trials.” In The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro, 91–109. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Kieckhefer, Richard. “Mythologies of Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 1 (2006): 79–108. Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Knoppers, Laura Lunger, and Joan B. Landes, eds. Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

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Langdon, Helen. “Salvator Rosa: A Variety of Surfaces.” In Almost Eternal: Painting on Stone and Material Innovation in Early Modern Europe, ed. Piers Baker-Bates and Elena Calvillo, 328–54. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Macioce, Stefania. “Figure della magia.” In L’incantesimo di Circe: Temi di magia nella pittura da Dosso Dossi a Salvator Rosa, ed. Stefania Macioce, 11–44. Rome: Logart, 2004. Martin, Ruth. Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989. McGrath, Elizabeth. “‘Una striga in Palermo’: A Sicilian Document from the Italian Sketchbook.” In Van Dyck 1599–1999: Conjectures and Refutations, ed. Hans Vlieghe, 43–51. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Monter, E. William. “Women and the Italian Inquisitions.” In Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose, 73–87. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Montesano, Marina. Caccia alle streghe. Rome: Salerno, 2012. Montesano, Marina. Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Morel, Philippe. Mélissa: Magie, astres et démons dans l’art italien de la Renaissance. Paris: Hazan, 2008. Morgan, Luke. The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Oliphant, Samuel Grant. “The Story of the Strix: Ancient.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 44 (1913): 133–49. Owens, Yvonne. Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: The Witches and Femmes Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Paule, Maxwell Teitel. Canidia, Rome’s First Witch. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Peltzer, Arthur. “Nordische und italienische Teufels und Hexenwelt.” In Cristianesimo e ragion di stato: L’umanesimo e il demoniaco nell’arte. Atti del II congresso internazionale di studi umanistici, ed. Enrico Castelli, 275–78. Roma: Bocca, 1953. Petherbridge, Deanna. Witches and Wicked Bodies. Edinburgh: Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 2013. Roma ermetica: Cultura esoterica e società a Roma tra XV e XVIII secolo, manoscritti ed immagini. Rome: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 1983. Roper, Lyndal. The Witch in the Western Imagination. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. Šedinová, Hana. “La raffigurazione della ‘Lamia’ nel Vocabularius dictus Lactifer e le sue origini antiche e medievali.” Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica 3 (2012): 113–24.

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Segrave, Hannah Lee Pamela. “Conjuring Genius: Salvator Rosa and the Dark Arts of Witchcraft.” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 2022. Seitz, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Shearman, John. Only Connect …: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Simons, Patricia. “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library: The Intersection of Classical Fantasy with Christian Vice during the Italian Renaissance.” In Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, ed. Alison Poe and Marice Rose, 264–304. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. “From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch in Classical Literature.” In Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, ed. Dayna Kalleres and Kimberly Stratton, 41–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Stephens, Walter. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Sullivan, Margaret A. “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien.” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 333–401. Swan, Claudia. Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Symonds, John Addington. Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature. 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Outlook, 2020. Tal, Guy. “Witches on Top: Magic, Power, and Imagination in the Art of Early Modern Italy.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University at Bloomington, 2006. Tal, Guy. “Switching Places: Salvator Rosa’s Pendants of A Witch and A Soldier, and the Principle of Dextrality.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 30 (2011): 20–25. Tal, Guy. “Skepticism and Morality in Jacques de Gheyn II’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 44 (2022): 5–27. Tedeschi, John. The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991. Verner, Lisa. The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 2005. Vervoort, Renilde. Bruegel’s Witches: Witchcraft Images in the Low Countries between 1450 and 1700. Bruges: Van de Wiele, 2015. Williams, Wes. Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Wood, Christopher S. “Countermagical Combinations by Dosso Dossi.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 49/50 (2006): 151–70. Zdanowicz, Irena. “A Note on Salvator Rosa.” Art Bulletin of Victoria 20 (1979): 45–50. Zika, Charles. Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

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Zika, Charles. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Zika, Charles. “Images and Witchcraft Studies: A Short History.” In Writing Witch-Hunt Histories: Challenging the Paradigm, ed. Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo, 41–85. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. Zika, Charles. “The Cruelty of Witchcraft: The Drawings of Jacques de Gheyn the Younger.” In Emotions in the History of Witchcraft, ed. Laura Kounine and Michael Ostling, 37–56. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Zucker, Mark J. The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 25, Early Italian Masters: Commentary. New York: Abaris Books, 1984.

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Old Women under Investigation The Drab Housewife and the Grotesque Hag Abstract: Is old age in a woman a sufficient characteristic by which one might know her for a witch? In the two works on paper examined in this chapter, the old witch’s identity and intentions remain intractable and inconclusive. In Enea Vico’s engraving after Parmigianino, the drab housewife dutifully plying her distaff appears devoid of any sorcerous traits, but a subtle aspect of the visual semantics at play in the image raises the suspicion that she might, after all, be a witch. In Leonello Spada’s sketch, the grotesque hag pouncing upon a terror-stricken young gallant from behind embodies the witch in both appearance and act, but the letter containing the sketch suggests that she is best identified as an apparitional hag. Keywords: inverted world, distaff, left-handedness, incubus, nightmare, illmatched couple

The Bolognese painter Guido Reni (1575–1642) harbored a mortal fear of witches, believing them to have the power to render him unfit for his work by blighting his hands, that he never allowed entry into his house to any person of the female sex. The biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia relates that the banishment extended to old women in particular, about whom Guido complained that “every time he spent money or stopped to do some business he always found one [an old woman] near him.”1 Indeed, at the height of the persecution of witches in Italy, it was not uncommon for old women (vetulae) to be accused of witchcraft.2 Yet, except for their mature age, the accused bore no distinctive marks to set them apart as witches.3 In searching for would-be witches, inquisitors were compelled to resort to a range of physical “tests” performed upon the body of a suspected witch. If a stigma diabolicum was indelibly stamped upon her body, 1 Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, 2:67: “Temendo delle vecchie, e fuggendole, anzi lamentandosi, che ogni volta che spendeva o che fermavasi a trattar qualche negozio, se ne trovasse sempre una presso.” For Guido’s belief in the existence of witches, see Spear, The “Divine” Guido, 44–50. 2 On the term vetula, see Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 59, 263n. 36. 3 Dominican friar Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio (1521) refers to the appellation maschare or mascae for witches as an echo of their tendency to go unrecognizable or invisible. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 279; and Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 88.

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_ch01

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if the prick of a needle did not cause an appropriate irritation on the skin, if she did not sufficiently cry out under torture, or if hidden charms were found on her naked body, then the “evidence” rendered it conclusive that the woman was in fact a witch.4 But if these canonical methods failed to produce conclusive evidence, the identification of the witch remained moot, unless a self-incriminating confession could be successfully extracted under duress. Naturally enough, the question of how to recognize a witch occupied not just the inquisitors, who had a professional interest in the matter, but all those who believed in and were daunted by the reality of witchcraft, including Guido. In the visual arts, a witch might be instantly recognizable if the artist were to take care to equip her with magic accouterments or show her engaged in a preternatural activity, such as riding a broomstick to join in nocturnal revels. Confusion nevertheless arises when the witch is divested of all distinctive sorcerous attributes, while her outer appearance aligns with the emerging stereotype of the witch as a naked crone. Is it justifiable to identify an uncontextualized figure as a witch on the basis of appearance alone? In a Mantegnesque engraving by Jacopo de’ Barbari (ca. 1460/70–before 1516), Eugenio Battisti identified the old woman mounting a triton as a witch whose monstrous physique—illustrated by her drooping breasts and withered flesh—is “a total symbol of degeneration and abjection” (fig. 1).5 With regard to the naked figure of a sunken-chested old woman drawn by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch (ca. 1518, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin), Linda Hults postulates that “her wild hair, indecorous sexuality, and grotesque body probably define her as a witch.”6 The three half-length crones sketched fully dressed by Jacques de Gheyn II (ca. 1615–29, Teylers Museum, Haarlem) are identified by Claudia Swan as witches by appeal to the characterization of the witch by the sixteenth-century English demonologist Reginald Scot as “commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles.”7 4 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 541–56 (3.14–15). For the Devil’s marks, see Lea, A History of the Inquisition, 3:178; and Black, The Italian Inquisition, 234. 5 Battisti, L’antirinascimento, 157. The word “strega” (witch) also served as a symbol of feminine vice and was a common insult directed at an immoral or reviled old woman. Burke, The Historical Anthropology, 97; Black, The Italian Inquisition, 235; and Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 124–25. This meaning may suit some of the images; however, the scholars discussed here identify the figures as witches in the occult sense. 6 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 19. On this drawing, Lyndal Roper notes that “the conjunction of sexual rapacity and an infertile body … is what suggests to the viewer that she may be a witch”; Roper, Witch Craze, 165. Roper, 166–68, also considers Hans Baldung Grien’s Old Woman (ca. 1535, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) as a possible witch. 7 Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 163–64. Dürer’s engraving (1495) of four naked women featuring a skull and a devil is traditionally called Four Witches (fig. 104). Traditional identifications of a grotesque old woman as a witch have equally been contested. For instance, Margaret Sullivan identifies the hag in Hans Baldung Grien’s Bewitched Groom (ca. 1544) as the vengeful Fury Infamia; Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” 381. On the possible identification of old women as witches in Hellenistic sculpture, see Pollard, “Witch-Crafting in Roman Literature and Art.”

Old Women under Investigation 

Figure 1. Jacopo de’ Barbari, A Naked Old Woman Riding on a Triton, 1495–1516, engraving, 10.2 × 11.7 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The aim in this chapter is not to endorse or rebut conjectural identifications in particular artworks, but to argue that ambiguities attendant on questions of identity are intrinsic to the experience of the artwork by period viewers. That it was conceivable to construe a figure as a witch, albeit one underdetermined by the visual evidence, evokes the difficulty of identifying the witch in the real world. Battisti corroborates his identification of the old woman in a bronze statuette once attributed to Andrea Ricci as a genuine witch by quoting the Slavic proverb “Every old woman is a witch, and every old man a wizard”; yet consideration of its comparatively measured auxiliary lemma, “Though she is an old woman, she is not a witch,” underlines the above indeterminacies.8 The witch’s unresolved identity is demonstrated by the celebrated canvas of the Ferrarese painter Dosso Dossi (ca. 1489–1542) at the Borghese Gallery in Rome 8 Battisti, L’antirinascimento, 157. For both proverbs, see Leland, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, 195.

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Figure 2. Dosso Dossi, A Sorceress, ca. 1518–20, oil on canvas, 176 × 174 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

(fig. 2), described in the 1650 gallery guide as “a sorceress [una maga] who is making incantations.”9 While the protagonist is promptly identifiable as a sorceress, the painting poses a difficulty in sorting out the purpose and process of magic to the point that it is unclear whether the maga is benign or malevolent. The discarded empty armor, enclosed within the confines of a magic circle along with a dog, a wild bird, and a duckling, points to metamorphosis as the likely magic on display. But in what direction does it operate? If one identifies the protagonist as Circe, she may have transformed Ulysses’s comrades into animals, or else she may be

9 Manilli, Villa Borghese, 82: “una maga che sta facendo incantesimi.”

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about to turn them back to humans by way of final reprieve.10 If she represents a character in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516), the direction of transformation becomes crucial in determining her identity: she is either the malevolent Alcina who turned men into beasts or the benignant Melissa who restored them to their original human form. Addressing this quandary, Giancarlo Fiorenza astutely contends: “Instead of an iconographic puzzle awaiting solution, pictorial ambiguity points to the process of interpretation, or the idea that the painting is conceived as deliberately enigmatic.”11 Embracing this idea, I propose that the instability of the witch’s identity is an intrinsic and ineliminable ambiguity of the artworks. The two works on paper examined in the present chapter represent two old women who cannot be more different from each other. One is a dutiful housewife blandly engaged in spinning hanks of wool; the other is a surpassingly grotesque hag manhandling a handsome youngster. The former image, engraved by Enea Vico after Parmigianino’s drawing, conveys the feeling of a genre scene, whereas the latter, sketched by Baroque painter Leonello Spada, is best characterized as a caricature. Despite these differences, both works invite reflection on the disposition and corporality of the old woman. Vico’s figure bears no overt semblance to the witch of popular imagination, but a single alteration from a drawing to a print may turn a virtuous housewife into a sinister witch. In Spada’s sketch, the noisome hag embodies the witch perfectly in both appearance and act, but the words of the letter containing the sketch suggest that her identity is not that of an actual witch but an apparitional hag.

A Sinistral Housewife Between 1543 and 1544, during his sojourn in Rome, Enea Vico da Parma (1523–67) engraved four drawings by Francesco Parmigianino, his townsman.12 Curiously, in jarring juxtaposition to his other drawings illustrating classical narratives, Vico selected a fourth to represent a humdrum scene of ordinary domestic labor. An old woman stands in profile before a fireplace and diligently plies her distaff 10 The ability to read in the scene two opposite courses of metamorphosis invokes a cardinal principle in counter-magic whereby a magician uses the same accouterments and spells employed to harm only in reverse. To restore the men’s human form, Circe strikes the beasts with the opposite end of her wand and utters incantations that “counteracted the words said before” (Ovid, Met. 14.299–301). This principle is exemplified by reference to Circe’s magic in Nicholas Rémy’s Demonolatriae of 1595; Rémy, Demonolatry, 128. 11 Fiorenza, Dosso Dossi, 104. For her ambiguous identity, see also Morel, Mélissa, 232–56; and Wood, “Countermagical Combinations,” 156, 162–63. 12 Vico studied art in his hometown in 1535–40, possibly as an apprentice in Parmigianino’s bottega. See Bodon, Enea Vico, 17. That a few documents refer to him as Enea Parmigianino stirs his association with the famous painter. Bodon, 17–18. Giorgio Vasari dedicated a few paragraphs in “Life of Marcantonio” to praising Vico; Vasari, Le vite, 5:18–19.

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(figs. 3 and 4).13 Whereas most scholars have glossed over the spinner’s identification, perhaps in virtue of the evident domesticity of her presentation, David Ekserdjian suggests that this figure was “conceivably meant for a witch.”14 Ekserdjian’s conjecture rests on resemblance to the witch in Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated engraving Witch Riding on a Goat of ca. 1500 (fig. 5) in terms of advanced age and possession of distaff. Yet do these two features alone genuinely suffice to identify her (or any other female figure) as a witch? After all, in stark contrast to the florid effigy of the witch prevalent in the contemporaneous imagination, Parmigianino’s frumpily dressed spinner dwells at home and is shown knowledgeably performing domestic chores. Does the departure from figurative norm show that Ekserdjian is mistaken? The answer, I argue, depends on whether the critical question refers to the drawn or the printed figure of the spinner; crucially, the question of correct identification is determined by the salient difference between the two representations: the engraving reverses the drawing. A lateral reversal, on which the image is rotated around a vertical axis, becomes critical when the property of having a dominant hand is at stake, along with symbolic connotations of being dextral or sinistral. A right-handed spinner—by and large the majority in the population—fixed the distaff in the crook of the left arm and twirled the spindle with the right hand.15 While Parmigianino abided by this principle in his drawing, Vico, in his print, did not. One could deem Vico’s reversal insignificant, given that reproductive prints often yielded accidental left-handedness as the unintended consequence of slipshod copying methods, which may have dispensed with the essential intermediary drawing that was meant to preserve the orientation of the original. Nevertheless, the present image reversal cannot be dismissed as an unintentional slip because in Vico’s engravings of Parmigianino’s three other drawings—Lucretia Preparing to Kill Herself, Mars and Venus with Vulcan, and Proserpina Turning Ascalaphus into an Owl—the original direction is immaculately preserved, as of Vulcan hammering metal, Lucretia gripping a sword, and Proserpina accomplishing Ascalaphus’s metamorphosis. Printing all four designs shortly after Parmigianino’s death in 1540, Vico evidently determined their orientations independently on the basis of meticulous premeditation and strict 13 For Old Woman with a Distaff, see Popham, Catalogue, no. 700, pl. 378; and Spike, The Illustrated Bartsch, 30:301.39 (hereafter: B.). That the drawing was later cropped is evident from the items cut by the frame that fill the extended interior space in Vico’s engraving: an ampoule and a shell on the mantelpiece, and a lute leaning against the wall. Parmigianino’s three other designs printed by Vico are Proserpina (Popham, no. 40; B.30:303.45), Lucretia (Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 237, fig. 263; and B.30:280.17), and Mars and Venus with Vulcan (The drawing is lost. For an old copy of Vulcan, see Popham, O.C. 54, pl. 365; and B.30:294.27). 14 Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 237, 285n. 124. 15 For this rule and its violation in art, see Posner, “An Aspect of Watteau,” 282.

Old Women under Investigation 

Figure 3. Parmigianino, Old Woman with a Distaff, 1530s, pen and brown ink, 18.7 × 13.4 cm. Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth. Photo: Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 4. Enea Vico da Parma, after Parmigianino, Old Woman with a Distaff, 1543–44, engraving, 22 × 14.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Old Women under Investigation 

Figure 5. Albrecht Dürer, Witch Riding on a Goat, ca. 1500, engraving, 11.7 × 7.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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selectivity. Why, then, did he not maintain the original orientation of Old Woman with a Distaff as he uniformly chose to do in the remaining three, preferring to make the spinner left-handed? I propose that this left-right reversal reflects no arbitrary decision or lapse of technical command but should be construed as a subtle attempt to alter the identification of the spinner. Consequently, this engraving emerges as another case where labeling an artifact as a “reproductive print” is inadequate, since it fails to capture the printer’s intentions to reinterpret the original. Essential to my account is the range of symbolic values antithetically opposing the property of being right- and left-handed. Dextrality connoted virtuousness, whereas sinistrality was redolent of disorder, declaring a sinister or evil nature.16 The absence of context or attribute serving to invest Parmigianino’s spinner with a specific identity leaves her susceptible to these preconceptions about handedness in both original and reversed forms. Handedness is moreover particularly significant in this image because, in its antithetical symbolism, it accommodates a broad range of female characteristics, both positive and negative, that spinning, more than any other female occupation, conveyed in early modern Europe.17 In the economic context of early modern Italy, spinning was the principal means through which lower-class women supported their households. Thus, the distaff epitomized female domesticity and alluded to the moralizing expectation that a woman would live out her days under her husband’s dominion, rendering lifelong economic service. Christian authorities exhorted women to submit to the patriarchal model, pressing them into this dreary, poorly compensated vocation performed in relative sequestration. In so doing, they were motivated not so much by a concern for the textile industry as by the belief that such an occupation would deliver women from idleness, keep them away from sin, and encourage them to serve God. Accordingly, representations of the spinning woman in early modern art and literature often served to hold up to the general admiration and emulation the paradigm of the virtuous woman, valued for her domesticity, simplicity, and diligence.18 Parmigianino presumably conceived the drawing of the spinning woman 16 On the symbolism of mano dextra and mano sinistra, see Bonifacio, L’arte de’ cenni, 292–96. The fundamental works are Hertz, “The Pre-eminence of the Right Hand”; and McManus, Right Hand, Left Hand. 17 The dual symbolism in spinning is famously exemplified by the figures of Eve and Mary. They were both depicted working with a distaff, symbolically spinning out the thread of life, yet they differ greatly: Eve’s spinning evokes her punishment of constant labor, while Mary’s spinning embodies her female virtues. 18 The virtuous woman is described in Proverbs 31:19: “In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her f ingers.” Klapisch Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, 58; Wiesner, “Spinsters and Seamstresses”; Gibson, “The Thread of Life”; Matthews-Grieco, Ange ou Diablesse, 229–32; Franits, Paragons of Virtue, 71–76, 183–86; Biscoglio, “‘Unspun’ Heroes,” 165; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 104–33; and Stewart, “Distaffs and Spindles.”

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as a study from life, devoid of symbolic or moralizing meaning. Yet considering the widespread association of the female virtues with the toil of spinning, it would not be surprising if the spinner were invested in the eye of the beholder with the symbolized virtues of obedience, humility, and industriousness. At first sight, it seems natural to see in the engraving, as in the original, an unmediated study of everyday life, disclosing a heavily symbolic epitome of womanly virtue. Vico’s Old Woman with a Distaff is situated in a direct relation to the ample production of single-figure prints of full-length women, including saints, virtues, and heroines, alongside a smaller collection of unassuming, inwardly pensive women that are difficult to identify.19 Print collectors at the time might have been in a position to substantiate the identity of Vico’s spinner as perhaps a notable woman or a runof-the-mill housewife by affiliating her with analogous prints in their collections. Yet the categorical identification on the basis of occupation and properties would not have been endorsed by any who paid heed to right-left distinctions in images. For such viewers, the image would have offered an interpretative challenge. The anomalous operation of the distaff brings the engraving into relation with a panoply of images wherein the reverse-handled distaff, a proverbial motif associated with feminine virtue, signifies the class of disorderly women. The idle distaff was standardized in representations of Sloth and Melancholy as an attribute of shiftless women.20 Distaffs and spindles served as sexual ideograms to insinuate female licentiousness.21 Moreover, in the iconography of the topsy-turvy world, distaffs symbolized the minatory reversal of the patriarchal hierarchy. Thus, Omphale appropriates Hercules’s club and lion skin in exchange for women’s clothes and spinning utensils, and subversive wives disputing the household hierarchy ply the distaff as an extemporized club to beat their husbands.22 Juxtaposed with the resonant imagery of mishandled distaffs, the image of left-handed spinner may well have represented to the Renaissance beholder an “anti-model” of femininity. Beyond the interplay of the sinister and the sinistral, viewers might well have reflected on the unusual convergence of aging woman, distaff, and left-handedness as a compositional allusion to a specific and quite radical category of unruly women: the category of the witch. To begin with, the figure of the aging, indigent spinner exposed to the hardships of daily life conforms to the widespread belief that elderly 19 On saints, virtues, and heroines in Renaissance prints, see Russell and Barnes, Eve/Ave; and MatthewsGrieco, Ange ou Diablesse. On prints of single women with indeterminate iconography, see Emison, “The Singularity of Raphael’s Lucretia,” 385–90. 20 Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 300–302; Stewart, “Distaffs and Spindles,” 141–42; Matthews-Grieco, Ange ou Diablesse, 254, fig. 68; and Hodges, “Noe’s Wife,” 31. 21 Stewart, “Distaffs and Spindles,” 130–32; and Simons, The Sex of Men, 260–61. 22 Meijer, “Esempi del comico figurative,” 261, fig. 1; Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 60; and Even, “Andrea del Castagno’s Eve,” 40–41.

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women from the lower rungs of society were especially susceptible to the lure of witchcraft.23 An indigent or working-class representation diverges from the grotesque, unclothed witches presented by early sixteenth-century German artists in prints and drawings, but at the time of composition, the more prosaic visual stereotype had not yet been established as the preferred template of a witch.24 As noted above, the distaff formed a recurring motif in texts and images of witchcraft. According to the early modern conception of witchcraft as devil-worship, witches rode through the air on household appendages, including distaffs, to attend nocturnal revels in honor of the Devil. The misuse of quotidian implements as rigged-up aerial transportation underscored the idea of witches as disobedient wives intent on subverting the proper order of life, who resisted ecclesiastic and patriarchal efforts to circumscribe women’s social and economic roles to household maintenance.25 The penchant of witches to ride on poles smeared with magical unguents enabling the flight also went on to acquire a licentious dimension from Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Urs Graf. Their witches suggestively maneuver rods between splayed legs so as to direct them towards their pudenda, evidently revealing their onanistic ulterior motive in immorally gaining sexual pleasure without the need for men.26 Distaffs, in short, drew attention to the transgressive sexuality and refractory character of witches. To be clear, I do not argue here that Vico’s spinner categorically is a witch, but rather that it is one of the possibilities open to the viewer, since the print invokes the susceptibility of any woman in any guise to be discovered as a witch. The mooted identification in Vico’s engraving is not categorical but conditional on her left-handedness. The realm of witchcraft, anarchical, chaotic, and heretical, figured in the imagination of the time as the inverse transformation of the ordinary world. The deeply rooted conception of witchcraft as inversion reverberated in the rituals of homage and obeisance to the Devil that witches were thought to perform, such as planting kisses on the Devil’s proffered hindquarters on the sabbath or, as the Roman inquisitor Paolo Grillando reported in his Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis eorumque poenis (Treatise on Heretics and Sorcerers and 23 For a concise discussion of witches as old women, see Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 149–55. Levack, 141–43, sets the bar for older women to above fifty. For old women imagined and reported as witches in Italy, see Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 59, 65, 80, 263n. 36; Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 41–80; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 71; and Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 120, 124–25, and passim. 24 Vico’s woman is similar to the witches portrayed as quotidian old women bereft of any negative trait of their bodies in the woodcuts of Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus (Cologne, ca. 1489). Witches’ repulsive look increasingly gained popularity in late sixteenth century; Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 20–21; and Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 162. 25 On witches as bad housewives who failed in their domestic vocations, see Brauner, Fearless Wives, 71–110; and Purkiss, The Witch in History, 91–94. 26 Weigert, “Autonomy as Deviance.”

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their Punishments; written ca. 1525 and published in 1536), “not turning their face but their backs towards the devil.”27 Sinistral witches illustrated the conception of witchcraft entrenched in the symbolic structure of topsy-turviness. Witches, it was reputed, sacrilegiously made the signum crucis with the left rather than the right hand, cavorted counterclockwise in a circle during the sabbath, and reached out to touch the Devil’s left extremity in an act of allegiance. When unable to participate in the sabbath, witches set themselves left side down in order to spectate mentally at one remove from the occult sabbath rites.28 Two images depicting a left-handed magic practitioner—a necromancer and a witch—have hitherto been overlooked. The Florentine Picture Chronicle, a collection of ninety-nine drawings illustrating the history of the pre-Christian world, executed during the 1470s, possibly by Baccio Baldini, features among several magicians and necromancers the Persian magus Hostanes (fig. 6), the earliest (according to Pliny the Elder) to write on magic, numbered among the pagan sages who foresaw the coming of Christ.29 In Oriental headgear and billowing cloak, he stands barefoot inside a magic circle amidst four burning braziers. A sword and scabbard lie positioned in the foreground just outside the circle. Legions of conjured demons attempt to press their way hotly into the circle. In one hand the necromancer brandishes aloft a magic tome; the other is raised stiffly upright, directing a crooked-fingered gesture at the flying demons who proffer him magical treatises and scrolls. The gesture appears to represent a conventional “beckoning”—aptly enough for a devil-summoning magician. As Michael Baxandall has observed, in this gesture the innkeeper bids his guests approach in an illustration adorning a Florentine edition of Jacobus de Cessolis’s allegorical work Giuoco di Scacchi (The Game of Chess) of 1493–94 (fig. 7), and Venus draws the beholder of Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (Uffizi) into the lush garden.30 Typically, the invitation gesture, as that of blessing, commanding, and their ilk, is performed with the right hand. That Hostanes is gesturing sinistrally is to be expected, since to conjure his infernal minions he must first broach their upside-down world. A precedent for the sinister and sinistral invitation is found in Giotto’s Folly (Stultitia), the last personification in the row of Vices in the Arena Chapel. It depicts in profile a 27 Grillando, Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis 2.27. See Clark, Thinking with Demons, 14. 28 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 245 (1.16); Clark, Thinking with Demons, 15; and Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 45. Likewise, the Devil performs rituals with his left hand, as described in the Errores Gazariorum (1437); Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 162. 29 The drawings were probably not meant for printmaking but constituted a luxury book of highly finished drawings. It was attributed to Finiguerra in Colvin, A Florentine Picture Chronicle, 14, 50, 53. See also Whitaker, “Maso Finiguerra and Early Florentine Printmaking”; Whitaker, “Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini”; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 54. 30 On this gesture, see Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 67–68.

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Figure 6. Baccio Baldini, Hostanes, ca. 1455–65, pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, 32.6 × 22.6 cm., in The Florentine Picture Chronicle. London, British Museum. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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Figure 7. The Innkeeper, woodcut, in Jacobus de Cessolis, Giuoco di Scacchi, Florence, 1493–94. MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Photo © MAK.

plump man turning sideways towards The Last Judgment decorating the entrance wall. As Bruce Cole has pointed out, the Fool flashes his crook-fingered gesture toward Hell, which is adjacent to the row of Vices (the opposite row of Virtues ends in Heaven). His invitation of Hell unmistakably indicates his foolishness.31 The reading is further substantiated by the Fool’s calling forth towards Hell with his left hand, adding further evidence of his identifying vice and in keeping with Folly alongside other Vices and Hell on the left of Christ in The Last Judgment. Thus, both the necromancer and the Fool seem to convene the company of demons with a similarly askew, sinistrally bidding gesture. In the second image, Witch Riding on a Goat (fig. 5), Dürer fleshed out the construct of an inverted world through an abundance of transpositions in multiple symbolic orders. In the reversed universe, the female witch is shown astride a billy goat, gripping a phallic horn in her fist. She straddles her mount backwards, her disheveled 31 Cole, “Virtues and Vices,” 394. In another interpretation, Giotto’s Folly fails to understand social hierarchy, and therefore he invites the other allegories of vices, his pseudo-court, as a king addressing his court; see Romano, “Allégorie de la déviance,” 152.

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mane flowing counter to the direction of travel. There is a shrewdly reversed monogram at the bottom of the frame, next to which a putto viewed from the rear summersaulting with abandon. An additional, and hitherto overlooked, token of inversion in Dürer’s print is the witch’s right-handed grip of her distaff. In an image where relative directionality could not be more significant, the portrayal of a sinistral witch cannot be a coincidence. In Vico’s print, the sole element to indicate abnormality or diabolism is sinistrality. Yet a vigilant viewer, conversant with the range of symbolic values inherent in the device, should be able to see past the main figure’s deceptively anodyne appearance in entertaining the possibility that left-handedness might in fact be the very betrayal of a witch in the guise of an old woman. Could it be that despite the posthumous printing of the Chatsworth drawing, Parmigianino himself had printing in mind at the time of its design, anticipating the scenario of inversion and hence the spinner’s subsequent identification as a sinister woman? Claudia Swan compellingly argues for a similar intentional attribution to Jacques de Gheyn II, who anticipated the witches’ left-handedness in the engraving The Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath (fig. 77) due to the inversion of his drawing as a known artifact of printmaking.32 Parmigianino too undoubtedly anticipated the possibility of inversion in relation to some of his designs. Left-handed gestures in his drawings of Martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul at the Louvre and the British Museum suggest that from the outset he was thinking in terms of printing: the figures of Nero declaring the verdict and the executioners holding swords become right-handed ones in the reversed print.33 Similarly, he copied Raphael’s cartoon, initially developed for a tapestry in the Sistine Chapel, and printed it in reverse to render Peter’s right-handed blessing (the tapestry likewise reversed the cartoon).34 In the case of Old Woman with a Distaff, appeal to the attribute of being right- or left-handed is of little help in establishing Parmigianino’s intentions because, as both right-handed and left-handed versions of the spinner possess significance, either scenario is possible. However, two factors suggest that the Chatsworth drawing was not intended to be a print from the outset. First, the drawing has no washed areas executed in pen heightened with white, a technique Parmigianino typically used in preliminary studies undertaken for prints so as to achieve painterly effects.35 Second, the existence of another drawing by Parmigianino of a right-handed spinner—this time, a young woman—suggests that he conceived of his two spinning figures in conjunction with his other single-figure sketches of lower-class workwomen at 32 Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 136–44. 33 Gould, Parmigianino, 65; and Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 216–17. 34 Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 229. 35 For example, Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, figs. 26, 104, 105, 229, 234, 247.

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their toils.36 On the basis of this analysis, it should be reasonably clear that the initiative to engrave Old Woman with a Distaff was Vico’s own. Notwithstanding the close affinity between the engraving and the drawing, Vico’s Old Woman with a Distaff is not a reproductive work in the narrow sense of the label. As art historians have demonstrated, the relationship between originals and prints in sixteenth-century Italy was beset by contingencies, even when printers aimed to maintain a record and to disseminate commendable works hitherto inaccessible to the general public. Printers deviating from the originals modified such elements as the proportions and topography of the figures or enriched the composition with new elements, be it a landscape, a frame, or an explanatory text.37 As for Vico, besides heightening Parmigianino’s design with intensified light and shade, he chose to reverse the composition. His decision to choose among Parmigianino’s four works the sole drawing whose inversion potentially subverts the identification of the principal figure suggests that for him left to right orientation was far from being a rigid technical parameter. Vico’s acknowledgment of Parmigianino as the originator of the work, in the inscription “fran parm inventor” appearing at the bottom left, in no way mitigates his own claim to originality. On the contrary, the fact that some printers who altered the originals added inscriptions acknowledging the inventors proves that these inscriptions exclusively referred to the invention of the theme, giving free reign to the engraver to modify the details.38 Accordingly, the acknowledgment to Parmigianino for his invenzione relates to the spinner’s form, not her identification as a character in the drawing. Since, in the absence of decisive iconography, the spinner’s relative directionality becomes the cardinal determinant of identity, by deciding to reverse the planes of orientation Vico invested his print with sophistication and wit, two major sixteenth-century aesthetic criteria for refined engraving.39 A version of Vico’s Old Woman with a Distaff, incised by the monogrammist DWF who unhoused the spinner by relocating the scene outdoors (fig. 8), accords 36 Popham, Catalogue, no. 764v, pl. 40. For laboring women, see Popham, no. 41 (Woman Kneading Dough); and Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 187 (Seated Young Woman Sewing). On Parmigianino’s observation of everyday life, see Ekserdjian, 182–84. 37 The reproductive print was conceptualized in Wickhoff, “Beiträge zur Geschichte.” For shortcomings of the term “reproductive,” see Wood, “Cannibalized Prints and Early Art History”; Bury, “On Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi”; Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 162–68; Lincoln, The Invention of the Renaissance Printmaker, 14–15; Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi, 27–33; Barnes, Michelangelo in Print; and Lincoln, “Invention, Origin, and Dedication.” 38 Bury, “On Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi,” 17–18; and Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi, 80. 39 Barolsky, Infinite Jest, 101–38; and Davis, Mannerist Prints, 10. This by no means suggests that in every occasion Vico copied an original in reverse he wished to alter its subject. For instance, around 1541 he engraved the ancient statue of Ariadne in the Della Valle-Capranica collection (today in the Uffizi) in reverse for no apparent reason. Bodon, Enea Vico, 62, figs. 19–20.

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Figure 8. Monogrammist DWF, after Enea Vico, Old Woman with a Distaff, ca. 1550–58, engraving, 19.8 × 17.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

with the interpretation proposed here. 40 Working in landscapes to embellish the original was not uncommon among sixteenth-century printmakers, but here the landscape enhances the spinner’s anarchical identity instigated by Vico. 41 Placing her in desolate, uninhabited surroundings starkly inconsistent with her putative homebound occupation exacerbates all possible suspicion as to her specific 40 Nagler, Die Monogrammisten, 1249 (erroneously called DMF). 41 Barnes, Michelangelo in Print, 22.

Old Women under Investigation 

ontological identification and moral characterization. At a stroke, the metaphysical transformation is brought to a climax: from her first appearance as a household drab, toiling in perfect submission to earthly and divine authority, she has been turned into an intractable, wayward woman, perhaps a sly witch in the making.

A Hag-Ridden Nightmare In a letter to an unspecif ied recipient, the Bolognese painter Leonello Spada (1576–1622) bemoans the frightening nightmare that besets him without let and asks for a remedy to alleviate his anxiety (fig. 9): My most esteemed Lord, always at your service. I cannot do otherwise than dream of them all night, and I do not know how to dismiss them from my mind; actually, they are beginning to truly scare me, hence I believe it will be better to let them go precisely down the churn to the house of the Devil, their home. Otherwise, they will make themselves known and will want to become forgotten again with their protruding tongue. This is a poor local young man, who has been condemned to this torment. Look, if they start to carry out these tortures, I believe that, for sure, the criminals will take great advantage of this to make the delinquents confess, and if even one will manage to escape this, they will be completely devastated. With grace, send me some secret so I can forget about them, and ask Sir Lorenzo Genaro in my name to prepare some kind of elixir to distract my brain from this oriental plague while I live to serve you. 42

Spada wrote the letter, dated February 14, 1620, during his stay in Parma under the service of Duke Ranuccio I Farnese. The letter, despite its lightly humorous tone, testifies to a certain illness that afflicted Spada and may have been responsible for causing his untimely death two years later. 43 Lothar Sickel plausibly identifies Spada’s addressee as his artist friend Guercino (1591–1666). Sickel’s inference is based 42 “Signor mio osservandissimo, Io non fo se non sogniarmeli tutta la note et non so come fare a cavarmeli della mente anci incominciano a farmi paura da dovero si che credo che sara meglio a lasciarli andare apunto giu per la Zangola à casa del Diavolo loro abitatione se no si farano famigliari et vorano ancor loro smesticarsi col dar linguino. Questo è un povero giovane nostrano il quale è condenato a questo suplitio. Guardate se incominciano à dar di questi tormenti credo al sicuro che farano profito grande ne i criminali, a far confesar li deliquenti, ne se ne salverà piu uno, vadino in tanta malora. Di gratia la mi mandi un qualche secreto per scordarmeli, et preghi in mio nome Sig. Lorenzo Genaro, che faci fare una qualche quintasenza svilupatoria, che mi distrighi il cervello, da questa peste orientale. In tanto ch’io li vivo servitore. Per ser.la sempre.” On this letter, see Kurz, Bolognese Drawings, 138–39; Grassi, Il disegno italiano, 114; Pirondini et al., Leonello Spada, 53; and Sickel, “Spada’s Letter to Guercino.” 43 Sickel, “Spada’s Letter to Guercino,” 27.

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Figure 9. Leonello Spada, Witch Pursuing after a Young Man, a letter of February 14, 1620, pen and black ink, 30.7 × 21 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

Old Women under Investigation 

primarily on the only individual name mentioned in the letter, that of Lorenzo Gennari, who was Guercino’s close friend and apprentice; at the time Spada wrote his letter, both resided in Cento. That Spada asks Guercino to obtain some kind of drug from Lorenzo is only reasonable given that the latter was a joint owner of a pharmacy in 1648 and must have had at least a basic knowledge of medicine.44 While Sickel, among other art historians, provides insightful information about the circumstances of Spada’s letter, one signal element remains understudied: the accompanying sketch of two half-length figures in fervent pursuit bisecting the text. Spada describes the dream as scary and tormenting, and compares it to an “oriental plague” (peste orientale)—an uncommon term in use at the time that most likely relates the dream to a chronic disease—but he discloses nothing at all verbally about its content.45 The omission is seemingly rectified by the drawing. In it, an outwardly grotesque hag to the point of caricature pouncing from behind on a terror-stricken young gallant—the latter conceivably a rejuvenated stand-in for the forty-four years old artist. He is shown in three-quarters profile, as he flees to escape her clutches, palms outstretched as though to repel an oppressive force, to no avail.46 A pair of fiendish talons hold the young fop in an iron grip, one claw gripping at his shoulder, the other wrapping itself around his head to force it to turn around. With wild-staring, exophthalmic eyes—the hyperbolized physiognomy signaling the belligerence and furor of madmen—she appears to be hypnotizing him into compliance with her lustful intentions. 47 Her distorted, wide-gaping mouth seems to emit a bloodcurdling shriek, as her erect, inordinately long and phallic tongue protrudes decisively, threatening to penetrate the victim’s own, circularly pursed oral cavity—an act that bespeaks copulation, consistent with the popular conception of the tongue as a sexualized organ that possesses similar physical characteristics to a penis.48 Her facial hirsutism and muscular anatomy betray a masculine libido 44 Sickel, “Spada’s Letter to Guercino,” 28. Pirondini et al., Leonello Spada, 53n. 285, identified Antonio Mirandola or Guercino as Spada’s addressee. Lorenzo Gennari worked with Guercino in Cento until 1630. Guercino, who had family and artistic ties to the Gennari family (some of them were painters), bequeathed them his art collection, including works by Spada. Turner and Mahon, The Drawings of Guercino, xix. 45 For the evolution of the term “Oriental plague,” which signals the Ottoman Empire as a “timeless repository of epidemics,” see Varlik, “Oriental Plague.” Varlik traces the earliest use of this term in English and French to the mid-eighteenth century. Spada’s letter locates the use of this term more than a century earlier and in Italian, too. 46 On the gestural reaction of adverse palms as a sign of averseness and detestation, see Spear, The “Divine” Guido, 64–66; and chapter 5. 47 On the madmen’s exophthalmic eyes, see Kromm, The Art of Frenzy, 43–45, 48–49, 131–35. 48 Anatomists and medical professionals depicted the mouth as a sexual orif ice and the tongue as a phallus. For instance, the physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogae breves (Bologna, 1523) compares the tongue and the penis on the basis of their voluntarily outward movement. The tongue “like the penis … has more and larger pulsating and quiet veins than any other member equal to its size”;

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and allude to the hybridity of her gender. 49 Some features of the hag’s body—the jutting chin bristling with tufts of hair, the mustache resembling feline whiskers, the extruded tongue, the claw-like talons, and the glaring eyes—chime in well with Mikhail Bakhtin’s description of the grotesque body, the body that extrudes itself into the world, its boundaries breaching the confines of the skin.50 The upturned pot worn by way of headgear and the broom affixed to it as ornament—visually rhyming with the man’s feathered hat—evince her violation of norm in relation to woman’s domestic role, just as kitchen utensils and brooms were employed by witches for their magic.51 Holding her up to ridicule for her vain attempts to appear feminine, the details of the ill-fitting necklace, suggestive of hempen rope, and the bizarre dangling earrings further underscore the infamy attaching to this figure. Thus far, there is no mistaking the fiend as an odious witch figure, clearly signaled in terms of minatory stance, rampant predatory sexuality, and grotesque externals. At the same time, the letter invites a more nuanced reading of this figure. The carnal pursuit depicts or personifies Spada’s upsetting dream: the grotesque hag is either the figure recurrently stalking him every night or the embodiment of his tormented psyche.52 Either way, this drawing, despite its intimate framing in the context of a private letter, is far from best interpreted as a faithful recollection of a dream eagerly recorded by the artist upon awakening. In the following analysis, it will become clear that this sketch was carefully devised from iconographic traditions alongside learned theories and common beliefs about nightmare. These artistic and intellectual references, notwithstanding the drawing’s humorous spirit, were intended to cater for his private viewer, Guercino, who could be relied upon to appreciate his friend’s inventiveness and riveting comic skills. A central concept to unravel the meaning of the drawing relates to the incubus, a Latin word literally meaning “that which lies upon another.” I do not refer here to theories of demonic generation, according to which the devil takes the role of a succubus by assuming a fetching feminine shape in order to steal a man’s semen during the sexual act, so that in a subsequent transformation, the resulting incubus can implant the semen into a witch’s body; given the devil’s tempting his victims Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, 169–70. For further examples, see Mazzio, “Sins of the Tongue,” 58–60. For the female tongue as a phallic weapon against men, see Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, 155–56. 49 On symbolic implications of hairy women, see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, 181–83. Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 68–69, associates the bearded witch in a Renaissance poem with the lustful figure of the folkloric Wild Woman. 50 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 303–67. 51 Her headgear brings to mind the cauldron on Satan’s head as a debased crown for the Prince of Hell in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1510, Prado), and a metal cap on the eponymous figure in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet (1563, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp). 52 Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 190, also reads the witch figure as an apparition perceived by the stand-in figure for the artist as a horrifying reality.

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by taking the form of a beautiful young woman, Spada’s drawing obviously does not pertain to this theory.53 Rather, I refer to long-standing, preexistent conception of the incubus as a nocturnal assailant who tramples, presses, and suffocates sleepers, rendering them effectively paralyzed. The term “incubus,” or “nightmare,” also designated the phenomenon of this physical assault (as Henri Fuseli’s Nightmare famously evinces). The conviction that the incubus not only suffocates the dreamer but preys on him sexually was already established in ancient texts. The fifth-century Roman physician Caelius Aurelianus, whose treatise On Chronic Diseases was published in several printed editions during the sixteenth century (including a Venetian edition of 1547), classified a chronic nightmare (incubo) as a malady, describing it as a state in which the dreamer imagines a nocturnal attacker goading him “to satisfy a shameful lust.”54 The sufferer’s mingled feelings of oppression and lust were remarked upon by the fifteenth-century professor of medicine Giovanni Arcolano, who explained that the disease called incubus makes the sleeper feel “as if a heavy fantasy lies down on him and sleeps with him.”55 As early as the fourteenth century the incubus was conceived as a demon, especially by theologians, and as an animal and, more frequently, a malevolent crone or a witch by common people.56 The French surgeon Ambroise Paré explains in Des monstres et prodiges (On Monsters and Marvels), first published in 1573, that “physicians hold that Incubus is a sickness in which the person thinks he is being oppressed and suffocated by some heavy load on his body, and it comes principally at night; the common people say that it is an old woman who is loading down and 53 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 46–48, 63–64, 80–82, 98–99. 54 Aurelianus, On Acute Diseases, 474–75 (1.3.56). Other editions are Basel, 1529; and Lyon, 1567, 1569. The sexual overtones of the word “incubus” are suggested by its cognates concumbere (to sleep with) and concubinus (concubine). Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies makes the sexual connotations of the incubus explicit, describing the incubi as hairy creatures who are “shameless towards women and manage to lie with them.” See Stewart, “Erotic Dreams,” 286–88; and Gordon, Supernatural Encounters, 191–92. 55 Van der Lugt, “The Incubus in Scholastic Debate,” 196, with further thirteenth- to fifteenth-century texts that describe a sexual incubus. 56 Van der Lugt, “The Incubus in Scholastic Debate,” 198. One of the debates among theologians and physicians focused as to whether the aggressor—a demon, an animal, or an old woman—pressing on the patient and suffocating him to the extent of immobilization appeared for real or only in imagination. The incubus was explained as a disease in which the feeling of suffocation often by pressing on the dreamer is caused by natural causes. Bernard de Gordon (Lyon, 1550, 2.24), among others, rejected the common belief that “the incubus is an old woman [vetula] who tramples on and presses down the body” as nonsense; Van der Lugt, 176. In the satirical Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515–19), wanton wenches who desired a handsome man ride at night on brooms and visit him in his sleep, “but to him all is naught but a dream”; Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” 376. For witches as nightmare visitors in early modern Europe, see Davies, “The Nightmare Experience.” On the classical origins of night hags attacking their victims during their sleep as a dream vision, see Spaeth, “The Terror that Comes in the Night.”

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compressing the body [and] the common people call her chauche-poulet.”57 Reginald Scot recorded in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) the testimony of a man “vexed with a disease called Incubus,” who complains that each night he is unmanned by a grievous woman squatting massively on his chest so that he is unable to stir a limb or put up any resistance.58 In the Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton in a chapter entitled “The Force of Imagination” cites the case of sleepers taking themselves to be “troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it). If they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides and sits so hard upon them that they are almost stifled for want of breath.”59 In Italy, the fifteenth-century medical professor Antonio Guaineri referred to these deleterious throttlers of slumbering men as striae and zobianae, the terms for witches, and demeaned this belief as one held by the common people in order to rationalize the enigmatic phenomenon of nocturnal suffocation.60 Spada’s sketch draws together several confluent aspects of the incubus: as an appalling nightmare involving a ghastly defilement; as an infernal ghoul appearing in the guise of an old woman or a witch; and as a disease, especially a chronic or recurrent one, consistent with the affliction mentioned in the letter. Another aspect that ties the drawing to the experience of the nightmare is the rendition of the onslaught as a real event. Had it not been for the informative text, one could not have guessed, based on the image alone, that the concupiscent, molesting hag is a figment of Spada’s imagination. For one, the dreamer figure is wide awake and on the move; for another, the spatial division between him and his sleep vision is fuzzy and imprecise, for there is no visible demarcation between the two drawn figures. These discrepancies can be reconciled if we regard his wakefulness and the blurring of reality and fiction as visual cues declaring that the dream is experienced as a real occurrence. In his influential categorization of dreams, ancient Roman philosopher Macrobius explains visum or phantasma: “The Apparition comes upon one at the moment between wakefulness and slumber, in the so called ‘first-cloud’ of sleep. In this drowsy condition he thinks he is still fully awake and imagines he sees specters rushing at him or wandering vaguely about, differing from natural creatures in size and shape.” Macrobius associates this form of dream with the ephialtes, the Greek word that was translated to incubus, which “rushes upon people in their 57 Paré, On Monsters and Marvels, 105. 58 Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 47–48. 59 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 253. 60 Van der Lugt, “The Incubus in Scholastic Debate,” 194–95. On zobianae, see Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 155–56. Among other terms for evil creatures that attacked people in their sleep and tried to suffocate them are the witch-related words lamia, masca, and stria. For instance, the bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne (ca. 1180–1249), argues that lamiae are demons assuming the shape of old women and occasionally killing children. Van der Lugt, 181–82.

Old Women under Investigation 

sleep and presses them with a weight which they can feel.”61 In Scot’s recorded testimony, the victim apprehends the ghoulish oppressor through the ordinary route of the senses—“I saw with mine eies, and felt with mine hands”—for all that she is pure fantasy. Similarly, Spada relinquished the use of mediating visual props, such as background clouds or window frame, that might serve to differentiate between the veridical and the imaginary, in order to heighten the impression that the dreamer is unable to discriminate real from unreal. The carefully constructed ontological slippage between the real and the unreal, while reducing the immediate apprehension of the scene as a dream, inflicts upon the viewer a discomfort that is not unlike that of the dreamer, bringing the dream experience itself closer to hand. The physical ordeal of suffering at the hands of an incubus typically occurred when the sleepers lay in a recumbent position in bed. In a stark deviation, Spada choreographed the nightmare dynamically, as an attack in progress. The arrangement was inspired by an array of visual sources replete with additional meanings. At its core, the drawing hinges on well-known narratives of debauched women lashing out at the men who reject their advances in a paroxysm of thwarted lust. Representative examples are Potiphar’s wife lusting after Joseph in Orazio Borgianni’s 1615 etched copy of the fresco by the school of Raphael in the Vatican Logge (fig. 10), and Circe pursuing Picus in Antonio Tempesta’s etching for the 1606 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (fig. 11).62 As in Spada’s drawing, the aggressor comes at her victim from behind, making a grab for his body while he twists defensively, head thrown back, to flee from her. Spada’s crone, however, is far more extreme than the mythological and biblical seductresses, as she grabs and pounces and violently wrenches the man’s head around to penetrate his gaping mouth and stare at him gimlet-eyed until he is done for. Caravaggio’s influence on Spada—the latter earning the undeserved appellation “scimmia [ape] del Caravaggio”—is evident from the drawing’s chiaroscuro and light and shade effects, as noted.63 Thematic and compositional aspects are equally Caravaggesque. Caravaggio’s Fortune-Teller (fig. 12) similarly features a female supposedly endowed with magical prowess in intimate physical proximity to a plumed and primped foppish-looking young man. As she pretends to read his outstretched palm, the sweetly smiling chiromancer subtly dispossesses the young man of his ring, raptly holding his gaze while the latter seems content to languish in her power. The half-length format Spada resorted to for his nightmare visitation was 61 Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 89 (1.3.7). See Gordon, Supernatural Encounters, 189–90. 62 Tempesta’s title “Circe concubitum [concubine] detestatur Picus” is in tune with Circe’s deep-rooted portrayal as a lustful prostitute (see discussion on Carracci’s drawing in chapter 4). 63 Grassi, Il disegno italiano, 114. During Spada’s stay in Rome and Malta between 1609 and 1614, he could have closely observed Caravaggio’s works.

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Figure 10. Orazio Borgianni, Potiphar’s Wife Lusting after Joseph, 1615, etching, copy of the fresco by the school of Raphael in the Vatican Logge, 15 × 18.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

entirely apt inasmuch as this particular format had often been reserved for comic or anecdotal scenes; Caravaggio’s Fortune-Teller was the latest in a lineage that went back to Dosso Dossi’s Satyr Chasing a Nymph (ca. 1508, Palazzo Pitti, Florence).64 In a departure from Caravaggio, Spada enhanced the contrast of figural types by rendering an antithetical juxtaposition, or contrapposto, of young and old, beautiful and ugly.65 Spada must have taken much delight in sketching an imaginative close-up 64 Hochmann, “Genre Scenes by Dosso and Giorgione.” A painting by a Giorgionesque artist of an old fortune-teller presenting a man with cards, which was recorded in Fulvio Orsini’s collection in 1600 (Hochmann, 69–71) seems to be the source for Philippe Thomassin’s engraving, made during his stay in Rome at the end of the sixteenth century, of a crone offering a raw egg to an elegant young man who averts his eyes and sheds tears. The inscription “no more egg, I want a wife” probably means that the young man is physically diminished by the crone’s sexual appetite. See Matthews-Grieco, “Satyrs and Sausages,” 42–44, fig. 1.9. The figures’ postures and the man’s striped attire are very similar to the Giorgionesque painting. 65 Gregorio Comanini writes in Figino (1591): “As poets play with antitheses, that is, with contrapposti, so too do painters contrast in the same picture women to men, children to the elderly … and other similar oppositions from which, in painting, springs a charming grace.” Quoted from Pericolo, Caravaggio, 122.

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Figure 11. Antonio Tempesta, Circe Changing Picus into a Bird, etching, 10.9 × 12.3 cm., in Metamorphoseon Ovidianarum, Amsterdam, 1606, 136. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

portrait of a crone, meticulously specifying her exaggerated bodily deformities, as seen in other satirical drawings of grotesque old women, from Leonardo da Vinci to Bartolomeo Passerotti.66 Her muscular vigor and unbounded aggression align perfectly with the instructions Leonardo enjoined upon artists to the effect that, unlike old men who “ought to be represented with slow and heavy movements, … old women should be represented with aggressive, quick, and wild gestures, like infernal furies, and their gestures should appear to be quicker in the arms and head than in the legs.”67 The disparity in age invokes the satirical topos of the “ill-matched couple,” on which senescence is brought together with youthful seduction via the mutual conniving at a bargain well-made. This iconography, typically represented On contrapposto of beautiful man and repulsive old woman in Giorgione’s paintings, see Campbell, “‘Unenduring’ Beauty.” 66 On Spada’s inspiration from Passerotti’s grotesque heads of old women, see Pirondini et al., Leonello Spada, 53. 67 Da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, 106.

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Figure 12. Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller, 1594, oil on canvas, 93 × 131 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

in a half-length format, was popularized in northern Europe but migrated early on to Italy. In Leonardo’s lost drawing, known today solely through a drawing by Jacob Hoefnagel (1602, Albertina, Vienna) and an etching by Wenceslaus Hollar (fig. 13), a lad with tumbling locks hugs from behind an ancient “benefactress” as she rewards his caresses with a coin drawn from a heaving money bag clutched tightly to her body. This deployment of an ill-matched couple drawn in staggered proximity, with the figure in the rear rotating the head of the frontal figure for a lingering gaze and an anticipated kiss, bears a strong resemblance to Spada’s positioning of his figures. Given the additional similarities in the figures’ clothing—the man’s feathered calotte and the woman’s pot-like headdress—it seems likely that Spada was familiar with a copy of Leonardo’s drawing or one of its painted variants produced by Quinten Massys and his followers.68 Amusingly, Spada deprived his ill-matched protagonists of the sole plausible motivation that might sway the younger partner into such a relationship. No money is flung around to lubricate the exchange in Spada’s drawing. In that event, such a relationship becomes, quite literally, a nightmare. 68 For the copies and painted variants of Leonardo’s drawing, see Stewart, Unequal Couples, 140–41, 169–70.

Old Women under Investigation 

Figure 13. Wenceslaus Hollar, after Leonardo da Vinci, A Young Man Caressing an Old Woman, 1646, etching, 17 × 13 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In devising a subtle interplay between his malefic crone and the temptress paradigm in Renaissance and Baroque art, and in rendering the imagined onslaught in the guise of a real event, Spada transmutes the nightmare experience into a satire of exorbitant female lust in old age. As with witches, an old crone’s moral and physical inferiority drives her to behave as if she were nubile and alluring. The

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promiscuity of witches long past their prime, seeking to satisfy their unquenchable carnal appetites by preying upon men, had been a site of anxiety, and hence of satire, since antiquity. Apuleius’s witch Meroe, mature yet still attractive, lures and enslaves Socrates, and Horace’s old witch Folia possesses a “masculine libido” (masculae libidinis), which is appalling twice over in that it is a crone’s libido and in being masculine, thus outstripping the appropriate sex.69 Fifteenth-century Florentine poet Domenico di Giovanni, known as Burchiello, impugns a witch’s loathsomeness and overbearing sexuality, deeming her “rufiana,” a procuress.70 Angelo Poliziano, in the ballad “Una vecchia mi vagheggia” (An Old Woman Longs for Me), portrays an odious old woman, evidently both a prostitute and a witch, attempting to seduce the terrifying poet into granting her a kiss—a dramatic scene not unlike Spada’s casting himself as the victim of a wanton old witch.71 In Pietro Aretino’s Sei giornate (1536), the midwife explains that a successful procuress makes a profit by numerous trades, including casting spells, performing exorcisms, and even forcing open the jaws of dead men.72 And the pseudo-Aretino dialogue Ragionamento dello Zoppino (1534) describes courtesans as wrinkled, mop-haired, floppy-breasted, desiccated old witches stealing into cemeteries to extract body parts from corpses.73 Thus, Spada’s drawing connotes the implicit interchangeability of prostitutes and witches. Spada may have requested a remedy that would alleviate his distress, but he seems to have found a provisional cure in humor. Numbering himself among the Baroque artists whose commitment to the genre of caricature was well known, Spada imparted a measure of comic relief to his rather ominous-sounding letter by referring to his illness through a lighthearted sketch.74 It seems reasonable to suppose that he must have molded his sketch to the artistic penchants of his addressee, Guercino, who himself was an original and prolific artist and caricaturist. Guercino must have found Spada’s drawing delightful and entertaining. Sickel points out two drawings where Guercino relied on Spada’s sketch for figural arrangement and interaction.75 The drawing is also commensurate with some of Guercino’s own thematic and 69 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.6–19; and Horace, Epodes 5.41. For further references, see Stratton, Naming the Witch, 71–105. 70 Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 66–72. 71 Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 75–80. 72 Aretino, Sei giornate, 293. 73 Salkeld, “History, Genre and Sexuality,” 93–94. 74 Berra, “Il ritratto caricato,” 99, 138n. 66, cites Malvasia and other sources that acknowledged Spada as a caricaturist. Berra, 102, nevertheless argues that this drawing is not a real caricature because it refers to a bad dream. 75 One drawing of choirboys rehearsing as their young teacher with a plumed headdress turning back to the boys behind him and stretching the arm forward (Windsor Castle, inv. 2515), and another of a youth touching the shoulder of a bearded man (Louvre). Sickel, “Spada’s Letter to Guercino,” 29.

Old Women under Investigation 

Figure 14. Guercino, A Witch, Two Bats, and a Demon in Flight, pen and brown ink with brown wash on laid paper, 11.7 × 25.7 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Photo © Art Gallery of Ontario / Purchased as a gift of the Trier-Fodor Foundation, 1986 / Bridgeman Images.

iconographic interests. In three drawings he sketched at short range a singular witch as an old woman. The drawing reproduced here shows the witch with a minuscule demon and flitting bats circling about her head (fig. 14).76 Spada’s drawing enters into a dialogical relation with Guercino’s humorous fascination with chimeras, as two drawings dated to the 1620s demonstrate: Three Bathers Surprised by a Monster (fig. 15) and A Monstruous Animal and a Peasant (fig. 16), showing a peasant fleeing an extravagant anatomical impossibility, a fusion of human foot, chicken legs, and flop-eared cranium. On the significance of these scenes of grotesquerie, Veronica White comments: “Guercino clearly derived as much pleasure from imagining the viewer’s reaction to such a bizarre invention as he did from creating it.”77 Equally, one may well imagine Guercino’s wry amusement on receiving Spada’s letter, and his pleasure in teasing out the overlay of artistic points of reference through which Spada turned a sickening harrying into an amusing satire. The latter’s masterfully inventive amalgam of imagination, diabolism, aberration, and intense emotional expression no doubt won Guercino’s appreciation. Spada’s crone bears out an identification as a witch not merely through being portrayed as a harrowing hag but through playing a double role as an incubus and a satirical trope of the lustful old woman. Although little else in Spada’s sketch betrays 76 The two other drawings are Half-Naked Witch with a Torch (National Museum of Warsaw, Rys.Ob.d.78 MNW), and an ape-headed figure of a witch holding a lighted candle, which fits in well with his caricatures of animal-headed humans (Windsor Castle, inv. 902658). A drawing once identified as a witch condemned by the Inquisition (Windsor Castle, inv. 902657) has been identified as the Florentine Canon Pandolfo Ricasoli; McGrath, “Una striga in Palermo,” 51n. 37. See also Gozzi, “Guercino among Witches.” 77 White, “Serio Ludere,” 144. On Guercino’s caricatures, see also Gozzi, “Dai, dai al’mat”; and Berra, “Il ritratto caricato,” 97–99.

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Figure 15. Guercino, Three Bathers Surprised by a Monster, ca. 1620–25, pen and black ink, 16.2 × 25.7 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

Figure 16. Guercino, A Monstrous Animal and a Peasant, 1620–30, pen, ink, and brown wash, 15.1 × 22.2 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Photo © National Museums Liverpool / Bridgeman Images.

Old Women under Investigation 

her apparitional, dream-state essence, the caricatural presentation heightens the element of fictive make-believe. In short, Spada’s witch epitomizes the creative ore merging the artist’s conscious and subconscious imagination, announcing itself as the product of his waking creativity no less than the contribution of his besetting nightmares.

Works Cited Primary Sources Aretino, Pietro. Sei giornate. Ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia. Bari: G. Laterza, 1969. Aurelianus, Caelius. On Acute Diseases and on Chronic Diseases. Ed. and trans. I. E. Drabkin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950. Bonifacio, Giovanni. L’arte de’ cenni. Vicenza: Appresso Francesco Grossi, 1616. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Ed. Holbrook Jackson. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2001. da Vinci, Leonardo. Treatise on Painting: Codex urbinas latinus 1270. Trans. Amos Philip McMahon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. Grillando, Paolo. Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis eorumque poenis. Lyons: Jacobo Giuncti, 1536. Kors, Alan Charles, and Edward Peters, eds. Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Kramer, Heinrich. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the “Malleus Maleficarum.” Ed. and trans. Christopher S. Mackay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. New York: Harper, 1901. Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Trans. William Haris Stahl. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Malvasia, Carlo Cesare. Felsina pittrice: Vite de pittori bolognesi. 2 vols. Bologna: Per l’erede di Domenico Barbieri, 1678. Manilli, Giacomo. Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana. Rome: L. Grignani, 1650. Paré, Ambroise. On Monsters and Marvels. Trans. with notes Janis L. Pallister. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Rémy, Nicholas. Demonolatry. Trans. E. A. Ashwin, ed. Montague Summers. London: Frederick Muller, 1970. Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. New York: Dover, 1989. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. Ed. Rosanna Bettarini, commentary by Paola Barocchi. 6 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1966–87.

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Secondary Sources Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Barnes, Bernadine. Michelangelo in Print: Reproductions as Response in the Sixteenth Century. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Barolsky, Paul. Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1978. Battisti, Eugenio. L’antirinascimento. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Berra, Giacomo. “Il ‘ritratto caricato in forma strana, e ridicolosa, e con tanta felicità di somiglianza’: La nascita della caricatura e i suoi sviluppi in Italia fino al Settecento.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 53 (2009): 73–144. Bettella, Patrizia. The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005. Biscolglio, Frances M. “‘Unspun’ Heroes: Iconography of the Spinning Woman in the Middle Ages.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25 (1995): 163–84. Black, Christopher F. The Italian Inquisition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Bodon, Giulio. Enea Vico fra memoria e miraggio della classicità. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1997. Brauner, Sigrid. Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany. Ed. Robert H. Brown. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. Briggs, Robin. Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1996. Burke, Peter. “Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and his Strix.” In The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sydney Anglo, 32–52. London, Henley, and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Burke, Peter. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Bury, Michael. “On Some Engravings by Giorgio Ghisi Commonly Called ‘Reproductive.’” Print Quarterly 10 (1993): 4–19. Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Campbell, Erin J. “‘Unenduring’ Beauty: Gender and Old Age in Early Modern Art and Aesthetic Theory.” In Growing Old in Early Modern Europe: Cultural Representations, ed. Erin Campbell, 153–67. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

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Cole, Bruce. “Virtues and Vices in Giotto’s Arena Chapel Frescoes.” In The Arena Chapel and the Genius of Giotto, ed. Andrew Ladis, 369–95. New York: Garland, 1998. Colvin, Sidney, ed. A Florentine Picture Chronicle: Being a Series of Ninety-Nine Drawings Representing Scenes and Personages of Ancient History, Sacred and Profane by Maso Finiguerra. 1898. Reprint, New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970. Davies, Owen. “The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations.” Folklore 114 (2003): 181–203. Davis, Bruce. Mannerist Prints: International Style in the Sixteenth Century. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988. Duni, Matteo. Under the Devil’s Spell: Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy. Florence: Syracuse University in Florence, 2007. Ekserdjian, David. Parmigianino. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006. Emison, Patricia. “The Singularity of Raphael’s Lucretia.” Art History 14 (1991): 372–96. Even, Yael. “Andrea del Castagno’s Eve: Female Heroes as Anomalies in Italian Renaissance Art.” Women’s Art Journal 14 (1993–94): 37–42. Fiorenza, Giancarlo. Dosso Dossi: Paintings of Myth, Magic, and the Antique. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Franits, Wayne E. Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Gibson, Gail McMurray. “The Thread of Life in the Hand of the Virgin.” In Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, 46–54. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Gordon, Stephen. Supernatural Encounters: Demons and the Restless Dead in Medieval England, c. 1050–1450. London: Routledge, 2019. Gould, Cecil. Parmigianino. New York, London, and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1994. Gozzi, Fausto. “‘Dai, dai al’mat’: Il Guercino e la caricatura.” In Nel segno di Guercino: Disegni dalle collezioni Mahon, Oxford e Cento, ed. Massimo Pulini, 38–47. Rome: Studios, 2005. Gozzi, Fausto. “Guercino among Witches, Wizards and Devils.” Journal of the National Museum in Warsaw 4 (2015): 226–36. Grassi, Luigi. Il disegno italiano dal Trecento al Seicento. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1956. Hertz, Robert. “The Pre-eminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity.” In Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification, ed. Rodney Needham, trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham, 3–31. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Hochmann, Michel. “Genre Scenes by Dosso and Giorgione.” In Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis, 63–82. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1998. Hodges, Laura F. “Noe’s Wife: Type of Eve and Wakefield Spinner.” In Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Joan Bechtold, and Constance S. Wright, 30–39. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Horodowich, Elizabeth. Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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Hults, Linda C. The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Jones, Ann Rosalind, and Peter Stallybrass. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Klapisch Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Trans. Lydia Cochrane. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art. New ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. Kromm, Jane. The Art of Frenzy: Public Madness in the Visual Culture of Europe, 1500–1850. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. Kurz, Otto. Bolognese Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. London: Phaidon, 1955. Landau, David, and Peter Parshall. The Renaissance Print 1470–1550. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Leland, Charles Godfrey. Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling: Illustrated by Incantations, Specimens of Medical Magic, Anecdotes, Tales. London: Fisher Unwin, 1891. Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Lincoln, Evelyn. The Invention of the Renaissance Printmaker. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Lincoln, Evelyn. “Invention, Origin, and Dedication: Republishing Women’s Prints in Early Modern Italy.” In Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective, ed. Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi, and Martha Woodmansee, 339–57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Lorizzo, Loredana. “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino: Incubi e demoni nella pittura barocca.” In L’altro Seicento: Arte a Roma tra eterodossia libertinismo e scienza, ed. Dalma Frascarelli, 185–96. Rome: L’Erma, 2016. Matthews-Grieco, Sara F. Ange ou Diablesse: La représentation de la femme au XVIe siècle. Breteuil-sur-Iton: Flammarion, 1991. Matthews-Grieco, Sara F. “Satyrs and Sausages: Erotic Strategies and the Print Market in Cinquecento Italy.” In Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, ed. Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, 19–60. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Mazzio, Carla. “Sins of the Tongue.” In The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, 53–79. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. McGrath, Elizabeth. “‘Una striga in Palermo’: A Sicilian Document from the Italian Sketchbook.” In Van Dyck 1599–1999: Conjectures and Refutations, ed. Hans Vlieghe, 43–51. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001.

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McManus, Chris. Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures. London and Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Meijer, Bert W. “Esempi del comico figurative nel rinascimento Lombardo.” Arte Lombarda 16 (1971): 259–66. Montesano, Marina. Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Morel, Philippe. Mélissa: Magie, astres et démons dans l’art italien de la Renaissance. Paris: Hazan, 2008. Mormando, Franco. The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Nagler, Georg Kaspar. Die Monogrammisten. 1919–20. Reprint, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1966. Pericolo, Lorenzo. Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative: Dislocating the Istoria in Early Modern Painting. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2011. Pirondini, Massimo, et al. Leonello Spada (1576–1622). Reggio Emilia: Merigo Art Books, 2002. Pollard, Elizabeth Ann. “Witch-Crafting in Roman Literature and Art: New Thoughts on an Old Image.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 3 (2008): 119–55. Pon, Lisa. Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Renaissance Print. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Popham, A. E. Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino. 3 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971. Posner, Donald. “An Aspect of Watteau ‘Peintre de la Réalité.’” In Etudes d’art français offertes à Charles Sterling, ed. Albert Châtelet and Nicole Reynaud, 279–86. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975. Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Romano, Serena. “Allégorie de la déviance: La ‘Folie’ de Giotto dans la chapelle d’Enrico Scrovegni à Padoue.” In L’image en questions: Pour Jean Wirth, ed. Frédéric Elsig et al., 146–54. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2013. Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. Russell, Diane H., and Bernadine Barnes, eds. Eve/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990. Salkeld, Duncan. “History, Genre and Sexuality in the Sixteenth Century: The Zoppino Dialogue Attributed to Pietro Aretino.” Mediterranean Studies 10 (2001): 49–116. Sickel, Lothar. “Spada’s Letter to Guercino.” Paragone/Arte 54/641 (2003): 26–32. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. “‘The Terror That Comes in the Night’: The Night Hag and Supernatural Assault in Latin Literature.” In Sub Imagine Somni: Nighttime Phenomena

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White, Veronica Maria. “Serio Ludere: Baroque Invenzione and the Development of the Capriccio.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 2009. Wickhoff, Franz. “Beiträge zur Geschichte der reproducirenden Künste: Marcantons Eintritt in den Kreis römischer Künstler.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 20 (1899): 181–94. Wiesner, Merry E. “Spinsters and Seamstresses: Women in Cloth and Clothing Production.” In Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, 191–205. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1986. Wiltenburg, Joy. Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992. Wood, Christopher S. “Countermagical Combinations by Dosso Dossi.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 49/50 (2006): 151–70. Wood, Jeremy. “Cannibalized Prints and Early Art History: Vasari, Bellori and Fréart de Chambray on Raphael.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 210–20. Zika, Charles. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

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Chimerical Procession The Poetics of Inversion and Monstrosity Abstract: The chapter explores monstrosity, heresy, and inversion as the prime trajectories of the subverted world of witchcraft through an analysis of Lo stregozzo, the celebrated engraving of a phantasmic parade presided over by an infanticidal naked crone, produced by Marcantonio Raimondi or Agostino Veneziano in the mid-1520s. The study centers on the visual complex formed by the arresting hybrid monster surmounted by a crouching man. While the inclusion of these two figures defies an iconographical explanation, framing the engraving in the artistic processes of imitation and invention recasts them as a means of thinking about witchcraft and art. Thus, the chimera incites reflection on visual eclecticism, while the crouching man is a sophisticated emulation of Michelangelo’s Sistine God. Keywords: invention, imitation, heresy, God, Devil, hybrid

Almost two centuries after Lo stregozzo (fig. 17) was engraved, Carlo Cesare Malvasia extolled it as one of the finest, most celebrated prints in history. In Felsina pittrice, his 1678 account of Bolognese painters, Malvasia asserted that Agostino Carracci’s large engraving The Adoration of the Magi after Baldassare Peruzzi’s cartoon was “on an equal level to the most renowned prints, even The Massacre of the Innocents and the Stregozzo by Marcantonio.”1 While Malvasia’s approbation of Marcantonio Raimondi, the Bolognese engraver to whom he dedicated a full chapter, is unsurprising, it is nevertheless remarkable that he elevated a print depicting witchcraft to the same exalted rank as two prints on biblical themes. Aside from Malvasia’s acclamation, a lucid testimony to the enduring renown of the Stregozzo is provided by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, who as an art theorist was intent on acknowledging its 1 Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, 1:362–63: “Mentre dunque Agostino andavasi così avanzando nel taglio, che pubblicamente dicevasi aver già passato ogn’altro, non solo del suo tempo, ma eziandio uguagliarsi a que’ dell’andato secolo, massime nella gran carta del famoso Presepe di Baldassare da Siena, da lui intrapresa in età di ventun anno, che correa voce, dover stare al pari delle più insigni, anche degl’Innocenti, anche dello stesso Stregozzo di Marcantonio.” For the identification of Carracci’s Adoration, see Malvasia, Life of the Carracci, 91n. 26.

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Figure 17. Marcantonio Raimondi or Agostino Veneziano, after Giulio Romano (?), Lo stregozzo, 1520s, engraving, 30.3 × 64.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

inventiveness. In a similar admiration stood the artists who copied it into painting (fig. 19) and recognized it as a source of inspiration (fig. 29).2 Indeed, the Stregozzo has all the prerequisites to elicit admiration. The original subject matter, merging ideal nudes and inventive monsters, is magnificently displayed through nocturnal effects achieved by tonalities of light and shade, an all’antica relieflike composition, and an exquisite craftsmanship of intaglio (engraving).3 Engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi (ca. 1470/82–ca. 1534) or Agostino Veneziano (ca. 1490–ca. 1540) after a design by an unknown artist, the print displays a whimsical parade fervently wending its way in the dead of night along a marshy stretch.4 Led by a horn-blowing youth riding a resplendent curly-haired goat, four buff males vigorously haul forward an upturned horse skeleton, atop which a naked old witch rides forth triumphantly. A bloodcurdling scream seems to issue from her mouth, as she clasps the tiny, upturned head of an infant, one of many in a turmoil of infants heaped about her feet in various contorted poses. The jar of magic potion gripped in her other hand lets out swirling coils of vapor, which mount up and intertwine 2 See also Salvator Rosa’s drawing of a witch riding on a skeleton in Princeton Art Museum: Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, 1:334–35, 2:28.3. 3 For a useful overview on observing, appreciating, and interpreting prints in the first half of sixteenthcentury Italy, see Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 284–98. 4 On the engraver’s identity and Agostino’s monogram in later states of the print, see Davis, Mannerist Prints, 112–13; and Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 627–28. Artists proposed as the print’s inventor include Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Baccio Bandinalli, Baldasarre Peruzzi, Gerolamo Genga, Rosso Fiorentino, and Battista Dossi: Chastel, Favole, Forme, Figure, 238; Gnann, “Marcantonio Raimondi: Lo stregozzo”; and Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 634n. 19.

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with her streaming, windblown hair. Beneath the witch, sheltering in the overhang of the skeleton, appear a straggling male, animalistically naked and squatting on all fours, and a fearsome hybrid monster. The print’s rapturous audience is seduced into an intellectual challenge of interpretation. An eloquent testament to the complexity of the Stregozzo lies in the dazzling array of interpretations to which it has given rise in modern scholarship. The witch has been variously identified as Hecate, Diana, Erichtho, a descendant of Aphrodite Pandemos, and an androgynous amalgam of Chronos and his daughter Ananka.5 However, there is little doubt—even among those who associate the print with ancient literature or medieval folklore—that the Stregozzo emerged from the erudite conception of witchcraft as a diabolical and deleterious practice. To begin with, the Stregozzo, a title already in circulation in the sixteenth century, colloquially utilizes the northern Italian dialect denoting “a coven of witches,” striazzo and istriazzo.6 The portrayal of the witch aligns with the sixteenth-century conviction that old women were particularly liable to engage in witchcraft.7 The jar containing a magic brew intimates the witch’s power to perform maleficia. The infants, whom she has presumably abducted and killed, are to be sacrificed to the Devil, in conformity to popular lore. Finally, the goats and the composite creatures are explicable as incarnations of the Devil. Relating the Stregozzo to the witchcraft phenomenon, Patricia Emison argues in a compelling study that the print was conceived as an instrument to persuade viewers of the veracity of witches and their nocturnal flights. Emison deems the print a response to the mass execution of alleged witches in the northern village of Mirandola in 1522–23, tracing comparable elements to Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strix, sive de ludificatione daemonum (The Witch, or On the Illusions of Demons, 1523).8 While Emison persuasively demonstrates that historical circumstances and attendant intellectual interest occasioned the production of the Stregozzo, there is reason to disagree as to the degree and manner of the 5 Hecate: Tietze-Conrat, “Der Stregozzo”; Aphrodite Pandemos: Mesenzeva, “Dürer und die Antike,” 195–97; Chronos-Kronos and his daughter Ananka, symbolizing Time and Law, respectively: Bach, Struktur und Erscheinung, 42–46; Artemis-Diana from the Wild Hunt or Furious Horde: Ginzburg, The Night Battles, 189n. 41; Zika, Exorcising Our Demons, 387–88; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 127; Lucan’s text on Erichtho as the basic invention of the print: Campbell, “Fare una Cosa,” 603. 6 The print was first recorded as “stregozzo” in Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, 678. For the phrase “andare in striazzo,” see Alunno da Ferrara, Della fabrica del mondo, 197r. A verse in a sonnet of the burlesque poet Francesco Berni (1497/98–1535) reads: “van su pe’ cammini, e su pe’ tetti la notte in istriazzo”; Berni, Il primo libro dell’opere burlesche, 97. According to Anton Maria Salvini’s commentary in Berni, Opere burlesche, 173, the words istriazzo and striazzo were originated in Lombardy (Lomazzo’s native region). 7 Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 59, 263n. 36; Bettella, The Ugly Woman, chap. 2; and Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 71. 8 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria.”

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visibility of historical elements in the print. Given that between 1500 and 1530 there were no less than twenty-five executions of suspected witches from Rome to the Alps (some numbering more than ten victims), it is impossible to establish a link between the (undated) print and any single execution. In fact, the print lacks any particular visual cue suggesting a connection to the execution of witches in the first place.9 Neither does the Stregozzo include a sufficiently distinctive element to confine it to any known text, ancient or contemporary.10 As for Emison’s argument that the print was intended “simply to convince people of the reality of what art was showing them”11—that is, the reality of witches—an explicit propagandistic function would have required an equally explicit pictorial vehicle of representation, not the multifaceted Stregozzo. If the print did occasion the fact/fiction question, it certainly also withheld any single unequivocal answer. As I argue, for its erudite audience exploring how the print itself instigates concepts, associations, and metaphors about witchcraft would have been far more illuminating and gratifying than imposing on the Stregozzo a single text, a specific execution, or a definitive stance on the metaphysics of witchcraft. Beyond authorial intention, I seek to plot a variety of discursive trajectories that the viewer of the Stregozzo might have followed. Crucial to my study is the perception of the Stregozzo in terms of self-referentiality. Stephen Campbell argues that the print “makes reference to the compositional process”: the prodigious skeleton serves as the “main armature of the composition,” whereas the skeletal chimera evokes the artistic process of reanimation, described by Leon Battista Alberti as the “construction of figures from the skeleton outward, in a series of layers—bones, flesh, clothing.”12 Linda Hults interprets the print as the artist’s self-promotion of his magisterial inventive prowess.13 Endorsing Campbell’s and Hults’s treatment of the print, I propose to expand and consolidate the interpretive avenue of self-referentiality by investigating the significance of a pair of conspicuous, albeit baffling, figures: the hybrid monster and the naked male figure crouching askew above it. Despite their extraordinary appearance and prominent location in the composition, the hybrid and the male figure have received little scholarly attention, perhaps by reason of 9 Castelli, “Donnaiole, amiche de li sogni,” 62, 211–12, associates the Stregozzo with the mass execution in Val Camonica in 1518. For the other witch executions, see Herzig, “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy,” 250–51. 10 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 630–31, traces three items in the print to Pico’s Strix: waterfowl as the Devil’s incarnation, nude men as a token of the witch’s sexual attraction to the Devil, and her appearance as a “wrinkled woman.” 11 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 633. 12 Campbell, “Fare una Cosa,” 603. Loh, Still Lives, 133, compares the artist’s studio in Enea Vico’s Academy of Bandinelli to the Stregozzo: “It’s almost as if the largely inanimate detritus strewn across the studio floor—the muscular backs, the skeletal spines, the beasts and bones—has come to life in this eerie image [i.e., the Stregozzo].” 13 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 39–46.

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occurring secondary to the overarching unit of the witch atop the skeleton hauled pairwise by the four men. While the hybrid and the crouching man are not easily explained in iconographical terms, this chapter aims to explore them through an associational and symbolical reading as a site of thinking about the early modern conception of witchcraft and artistic creativity. The Stregozzo evinces how artists employed the subject of witchcraft to address debates about art.

The Chimera and the Crouching Man The hybrid and the man posing on all fours immediately above it are exceptionally curious in particular ways (fig. 18). The figure of the male impedes and sabotages the harmonious synchrony and coherence of the procession. His posture is inherently clumsy, if not tortuous: athwart the chimera, he seems to be planted in midair—floating obliquely without the aid of material supports. He appears out of true, tilted as though toppled in place rather than intentionally seated. Curiously, he squats towards the background in a way that fractures the consistency of the procession’s lateral movement. His flourished posterior is flagrantly presented to the viewer. In comparison with the upright male nudes carting the skeleton, the figure is undersized and unclassical. Furthermore, his possession of a two-pronged staff from which dangle obscure sinuous objects is of little help in determining his role and occupation. Formally and compositionally incongruous in scale, physique, posture, disposition, and activity, this figure is analogous to a fragment torn from one work then glued coarsely to another as a pastiche. Equally peculiar is the hybrid—or, more accurately, the chimera—situated beneath him.14 Composed of the body parts of diverse animal origin, it appears to depict an entirely novel species, unidentifiable with existing literary or visually fabricated monsters. A number of features highlight its absolute originality and meticulous depiction. Distinguished from all other figures in the procession, the chimera is portrayed in full profile (in this respect, akin only to the witch); it occupies the foreground; its staggering form remains unobfuscated by the throng 14 I prefer “chimera” over “hybrid” to designate a creature whose body parts, deriving from diverse animals, do not blend and efface their identities. A hybrid possesses a combination of characteristic strains from each parent, whereas the chimera retains genetically distinct properties from each source. Moreover, the term hybrid was but rarely used before the nineteenth century, whereas “chimera” was in use in the Renaissance to designate an imaginary creature, and was directly associated with art. The word chimera is “bestia immaginaria” (Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca 1st ed., 1612, s.v. Orco) and “mostro favoloso” (2nd ed., 1623, s.v. chimera). The word chimera was a figure of speech for imagination; Castiglione, II Libro del Cortegiano, 144 (2.39), describing “strani concetti e nove chimere” (strange conceits and new chimeras) of a painter, presumably Leonardo da Vinci.

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Figure 18. Lo stregozzo, detail.

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of overlapping figures which surround it. Moreover, whereas all other animals are represented in mid-motion, dynamically rearing forward or tearing along at a gallop, the chimera adopts a resolutely stationary position, feet planted firmly on the ground. Similar to the obliquely hovering male figure, ranged at variance with the forward thrust of the procession, the chimera is poised to come into conflict with the headlong processional impetus. In enlisting the pictorial strategies of immobility, representation in profile, foreground placement, and complete visibility, the artist handled the chimera in the manner of a scientific illustration in a zoological encyclopedia, a mode that allows the viewer to scrutinize it in isolation from its surroundings and to fully appreciate its singular morphology. The crouching man and the chimera, each sufficiently extraordinary to secure the viewer’s attention, acquire further prominence by being strategically placed directly beneath the witch. The three form a vertical axis, in relation to which the viewer finds himself aligned: the back view and profile perdu of the foremost marchers relegate the viewer to the back of the procession, where the full profiles of the witch and the chimera situate the viewer frontally, at the right-hand side of the print. This implicit yet irresistible acknowledgment of the viewer’s position in relation to the pictorial field prompts an active engagement with the scene, particularly with these three f igures.15 In one possible interaction among the three, the chimera and the crouching man function as reference points to the witch—as footnotes to a text. At the time of the print’s composition, combinatory creatures and obscene figures were known from manuscript drolleries and grottesche decoration. As Stephen Campbell observes, by the later fifteenth century images of monstrosities migrated from these marginalia to “monumental and artfully wrought Albertian compositions,” a phenomenon especially apparent in Italian engravings which enabled such nonconventional images.16 I propose that the chimera and the crouching man maintain the explanatory function of marginalia scenes to the text. Assimilated within the pictorial space, the two reside at the intersection of coordinate axes—the horizontal “text” and the vertical “commentary.” These formal and compositional factors strongly suggest that the chimera and the crouching man possess a complex role, transcending that of an ordinary participant in the procession. In this chapter I offer a double-layered interpretation of the significance of these two figures. On a thematic level, the chimera and crouching man subtly conceptualize witchcraft as a domain governed by inversion, heresy, and monstrosity. On an artistic level, the two evoke theoretical and practical problems besetting the polarized yet interconnected procedures of imitation and invention. 15 Shearman, Only Connect, 192–93. 16 Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 163. This phenomenon is linked to the Stregozzo in Hults, The Witch as Muse, 40.

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The Crouching Man The crouching figure complies with what Paolo Pino would advise painters in his Dialogo di pittura of 1548: “In all your works, incorporate at least one figure that is entirely distorted, mysterious, and difficult [sforciata, misteriosa e difficile], so that you shall be noticed as talented by those who understand the perfection of art.”17 The ability of the crouching man to provoke and perplex finds evidence in a seventeenth-century copy of the Stregozzo (fig. 19). Painted on copperplate, this version, now at the Wellington Collection in London, is commonly but not uncontroversially attributed to Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), a Spaniard who spent most of his life in Rome and Naples.18 In its small scale and monochromatic palette, it preserves the nature of the original, evoking another, rarely mentioned painted copy of the print in Casa Martelli, Florence.19 Yet while the Martelli version remains impeccably faithful to the engraving, Ribera took the liberty of amending what he must have perceived as shortcomings in the original. To elucidate the procession’s destination and temporal scale, Ribera embedded in the top-right corner a crescent moon and a distant coven of witches riding beasts and brooms through the air, bowing down before the Devil, and dancing by a bonfire. Additionally, he restored to the composition an item incidentally omitted in the print—the rope harnessing the skeleton and serving as hauling strap for the two yoked and straining vanguard porters. Most notably, he made radical adjustments to the crouching male figure. With one foot solidly planted on the ground and other leg bent at the knee and kneeling on the back of the chimera as though on the saddle of a horse, the modified figure is now seen attempting to mount the chimera, rather than hovering above it in midair. As in the original, his adopted stationary position, now rendered even more fixed and unequivocal, counteracts the headlong surge of the parade, bringing him into inevitable collision with the heaving, frantically pushing men in the rear. To bring these men to scale, Ribera saw fit to enlarge the proportions of the kneeling man. Other harmonizing modifications were enacted: his original 17 Pino, Dialogo di pittura, 16: “In tutte l’opera vostre fateli intervenire almeno una figura tutta sforciata, misteriosa e difficile, acciò che per quella voi siate notato valente da chi intende la perfezzion dell’arte.” 18 From 1647 onwards the painting featured in several Spanish collections, the last of which was at the Royal Palace in Madrid. After the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington received it as a present from King Ferdinand VII and brought it with him to London. The probably late inscription on the painting names Raphael as the inventor and Ribera as the painter. Sebastian, “Iconografia de la Brujeria,” 205–10, attributes the painting to Ribera; Kauffmann, Catalogue of Paintings, 257–58, proposes a Flemish artist or a follower of Ribera; Spinosa, Salvator Rosa, 182, attributes the painting to Salvator Rosa; Salomon’s review of Spinosa’s Salvator Rosa, 495, rejects the latter and reiterates the attribution to Ribera. 19 The Martelli painting is reproduced in Tal, “A Chimerical Procession,” 275, fig. 9. Dürer’s prints were often copied into paintings out of esteem for his work. Dackerman, Painted Prints, 268–70. On painted copies of Dürer’s engraving Witch Riding on a Goat, see Mesenzeva, “Dürer und die Antike,” 194, and fig. 9.

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Figure 19. Jusepe de Ribera (?), Lo stregozzo, 1640s, oil on copper, 34.3 × 65.5 cm. Wellington Museum, London. Photo © Historic England / Bridgeman Images.

disheveled hair has given way to a tamed, closely-cropped head, his enigmatic staff has disappeared, and a diminutive ragged cloth draped over his buttocks somewhat moderates his original unclassical nudity. While Ribera reinstated the figure’s dignity (at least to a certain extent) by effacing certain glaring oddities in his characterization—bringing about an equalizing decorum in relation to the procession’s other human protagonists—it is to be strongly surmised that these modifications unintentionally compromised the meaning this figure had been designed to convey. What might this figure represent? Emison brings to light the probable visual source of the figure: Michelangelo’s God in the Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (fig. 20). She takes this figure to be “a good candidate for the devil himself.”20 Charles Zika takes the trailing ribbons of unidentified stuff caught in the cleft of the man’s forked stick to be severed penises, a reference to the belief in the supernatural power of witches to inflict impotence by stealing penises away from their rightful owners. Thus interpreted, the crouching man is an extension of the witch’s destructive lust and an inversion of Bacchic fertility processions.21 Zika’s insights provide invaluable critical directions for investigating the repository of potential significations with which this intriguing figure is imbued. The Sistine allusion, especially, brings to the fore questions of authorship and spectatorship. On account of this quotation of the Sistine God, Emison eliminates Michelangelo as the inventor of the Stregozzo, explaining that “so daringly quasiblasphemous 20 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 627. 21 Zika, Exorcising Our Demons, 389–90.

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Figure 20. Michelangelo, The Creation of Sun, Moon, and Planets, 1508–12, fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Photo: Alinari / Bridgeman Images.

a transmogrification requires a more ironic art than his.”22 While she suspects Battista Dossi as the inventor, I propose that Giulio Romano (1499–1546) is a likelier candidate. The latter attribution was proffered by Henri Delaborde in 1887 and later affirmed by Bruce Davis and Linda Hults for several reasons: Giulio’s distinctive approach to antiquity, his collaboration with Marcantonio and Agostino, his inclination to depict intensely emotional and energetic figures, his grotesque and lascivious frescoes in the Palazzo del Te, and his self-promotion as Raphael’s creative heir.23 Endorsing these scholars’ treatment of the issue, I aim to show that the crouching figure complies with Giulio’s artistic sense of irony, evincing a confluence of the sacred and the profane by highlighting that he reconfigured the Sistine God in an irreverent context on two other occasions.24 In Giulio’s set of drawings of coital positions, engraved by Marcantonio in 1524 and known as I modi, two sketches depict male partners, identified as a debased version of the Sistine God (fig. 21).25 The second work, whose link to the Sistine ceiling appears to have been overlooked, is a fresco executed in 1527 as part of his monumental project of decorating the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. In it, Apollo and Diana proceed overhead in their chariots on the ceiling of the Camera del Sole e della Luna (fig. 22). 22 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 627. 23 Delaborde, Marc-Antoine Raimondi, 204–7; Davis, Mannerist Prints, 113; and Hults, The Witch as Muse, 43–46. 24 Patricia Rubin traces in Giulio’s stucco relief in the Palazzo del Te an “overtly ironic and nearly pornographic rephrasing” of the Cascina cartoon, including a rear-viewed figure. Rubin, “Che è di questo culazzino,” 444–45. On Giulio’s irony, humor, and mixture of the religious and the libertine in his art, see Tafuri, “Giulio Romano.” 25 The two engravings are numbered 3 and 9 in the Toscanini volume. Ávila, Los Modi, 77; Turner, Eros Visible, 332–33.

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Figure 21. Anonymous artist, after an engraving of Marcantonio Raimondi’s Position 9 from I modi (drawn by Giulio Romano), 1550s, woodcut, in “Toscanini volume,” f. B2, image size: 6 × 6.5 cm. Private collection, Milan. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.

Giulio, who often paraphrased the latest art of Rome in his Mantuan frescoes for the delectation of Federico Gonzaga and his court, repeated here the iconographic program of his own Roman ceiling fresco in the Villa Madama. In the Mantuan palace, however, he rendered Apollo and Diana in a da sotto in su foreshortening and abandoned the symmetrical layout of the Madama fresco, allowing Apollo to take over the pictorial field. As Linda Wolk-Simon argues, Apollo’s brazen genital exposure playfully mocks the foreshortened nudity of the puerile putti painted by Mantegna, the favorite artist of the previous generation in Mantua, on the ceiling of the Camera Picta in the nearby Palazzo Ducale.26 Additionally, the figure of Apollo brings into play a second Roman ceiling, that of the Sistine Chapel. The 26 Wolk-Simon, “Rapture to the Greedy Eyes,” 51, 57n. 79. On Mantegna’s illusionistic ceiling decoration as a source of inspiration for Giulio, see also Ronen, “The Chariot of the Sun,” 100. According to Hartt, Giulio

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Figure 22. Giulio Romano, Apollo and Diana, 1527, fresco. Camera del Sole e della Luna, Palazzo del Te, Mantua. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images.

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formal and iconographic links between Apollo and the Sistine God are striking. In a witty double move, Giulio transferred the God-figure from the Creation of the Sun and Moon to a scene of the sun and moon gods and fused Michelangelo’s God and the nearby sun into a sun god. The postures of Apollo and God are similar, in that Giulio ingeniously employed an airborne figure deployed as if intended to be viewed at eye level to represent a figure firmly standing in a chariot and glimpsed from below. Both figures exhibit jutting, naked buttocks further emphasized and encircled with windswept, fluttering flounces. Adjusting the revered prototype to suit the enjoyable ambience of a pleasant palace, Giulio enhanced the bawdy representation by exhibiting Apollo’s genitals and the hindquarters of his two horses. Giulio’s two vulgar adaptations of the Sistine God demonstrate that his designing of the Stregozzo—in the mid-1520s during his sojourn in Rome or Mantua (where he resided from late 1524 onwards)—appears convincingly possible, if not probable.27 The Sistine allusion, along with the presence of Michelangelesque male nudes, may explain why Lomazzo took the inventor of the Stregozzo to have been Michelangelo, but what accounts for Malvasia attributing the print’s design to Raphael?28 As with the few male figures who have been compared to Raphael’s sketches,29 the crouching figure provides another site of comparison. While its basic form derived from Michelangelo, the manner in which it was deployed and reinterpreted is Raphaelesque. Evidently, Giulio learned from his master Raphael how to use (and abuse) Michelangelo’s figures. In 1519–24, he and Raphael’s other notable pupil, Gianfrancesco Penni, completed the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino at the Vatican, in part after preliminary designs left by Raphael after his death in 1520.30 Davis has pointed out that the muscular men in The Vision of Constantine are reminiscent of those in the Stregozzo.31 The potential effect of the adjacent fresco The Battle of the Milvian Bridge (fig. 23) merits further consideration. Comparable Romano, 1:109, the foreshortening occurs in response to Correggio’s cupola of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. 27 Giulio remained in contact with Marcantonio’s workshop after he left for Mantua; Talvacchia, Raphael, 202. 28 Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, 678. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, 1:68, in the chapter “Di Marcantonio Raimondi et altri intagliatori Bolognesi,” begins the long list of Marcantonio’s prints with the Stregozzo: “La prima dunque è lo Stregozzo, detto comunemente di Rafaelle [commonly reffered to as Raphael], e di Michelangelo scrive il Lomazzi.” Both Lomazzo and Malvasia attribute the printmaking to Marcantonio. The Wellington copy of the Stregozzo is inscribed in the lower left with “R.V. inventor,” referring to Raphael Urbinas. This attribution is also endorsed by Bartsch; Oberhuber, The Illustrated Bartsch, 114, cat. no. 426. 29 Albricci, “Lo stregozzo,” 58–60. 30 For Raphael’s share in the invention of the frescoes and their completion by his workshop, see Talvacchia, Raphael, 208–17. 31 Davis, Mannerist Prints, 113.

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Figure 23. Giulio Romano and others, The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, 1519–24, fresco. Sala di Costantino, Vatican Palace, Rome. Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images.

to the Stregozzo in its lateral and recessional movement, this fresco, too, features a Michelangelesque bare-bottomed figure viewed from behind. The virile warrior situated in the foreground just to the left of the central turmoil of horses is a citation of the climbing bather on the extreme left of Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina (fig. 26). The Cascina cartoon comprises isolated nude bodies ranged in diverse poses, whose adaptability and obscure iconography motivated artists to restage them recurrently, albeit in the physical and iconographic margins of their paintings.32 The warrior in The Battle of the Milvian Bridge is by no means an exception, though, as Patricia Rubin has shown, nude figures seen from the back possess a vital eye-catching role even when they are relegated to the margins.33 In the Stregozzo the Michelangelo-inspired rear-viewed buttock-baring figure similarly grabs the beholder’s attention. The transposition of Michelangelo’s God in the Stregozzo, however, diverges from the fate of the figures extracted from the Cascina for bearing a central and evocative role. His rhetorical role finds parallel in another of Raphael’s designs, The Massacre of the Innocents engraved by Marcantonio (fig. 24). In the center of the composition, a mother cradling a baby traverses the lateral stream of Herod’s soldiers who are 32 Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 153; Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art, 50–51, 234; and Keizer, “Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art,” 314–16. Figures from the Cascina cartoon were copied by Marcantonio (B.14:361.487, 363.488) and Agostino (B.14:423, 463, 487). On the rear-viewed nude in the Cascina and its impact on art, see Turner, Eros Visible, 298–302; and Rubin, Seen from Behind, 189–217. 33 Rubin, “Che è di questo culazzino,” 436–38. On the male buttocks in Italian Renaissance art, see also Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, 125–31; Turner, Eros Visible, 271–327; Aronberg Lavin, “Art of the Misbegotten”; and Rubin, Seen from Behind.

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Figure 24. Marcantonio Raimondi, after Raphael, The Massacre of the Innocents, ca. 1511–12, engraving, 28 × 42.6 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

seen chasing after hapless mothers. With immense pathos, she flees towards the viewer, creating a spatial as well as an emotional bridge to the spectator.34 It is true that the Stregozzo introduces conventional Albertian intermediates—two infants confined behind the back of the horn-blower discreetly peek at us to prompt our compassion—but their negligible presence is eclipsed by the male buttocks. The figure equivalent to the mother is therefore the crouching man, who likewise in a lateral momentum fractures a chain of classical male nudes energetically surging across a longitudinal composition; he, too, engages the spectator, although his indecorous movement, with a perspective-foreshortening body jutting out into the viewer’s own space, elicits ridicule and aversion rather than empathy. Another lesson Giulio learned from Raphael, also through a fresco in the Vatican Palace, was to invest the Michelangelesque figure with meaning by deforming it. On the left of the Fire in the Borgo in the Stanza dell’Incendio (ca. 1514–17), Raphael restaged figures from the Sistine ceiling, substituting his famous graceful style for their grave Michelangelesque manner (fig. 25). However, Raphael rendered one figure, the nude dangling from the wall—who recalls the Sistine Haman—with extreme anatomical distortion. Patricia Reilly claims that far from attesting to lack of talent or mixed authorship, this exaggeration is an intentional parody, “a

34 Rosand, “Raphael, Marcantonio, and the Icon of Pathos,” 47–49.

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Figure 25. Raphael, Fire in the Borgo, ca. 1514–17, fresco. Stanza dell’Incendio, Vatican Palace, Rome. Photo © Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images.

humorous demonstration of Michelangelesque gravità gone bad.”35 Akin to the hanging man, the crouching man in the Stregozzo possesses a flawed physique and adopts an incongruous position. Just as Raphael enlarged the dangling figure, Giulio shrank the crouching man, notwithstanding his placement in the foreground, thus parodying the formidable physiques for which Michelangelo’s nudes were notorious.36 As in the Fire in the Borgo, Giulio juxtaposed in the Stregozzo a figure distorting and parodying Michelangelo with a figure faithfully copied from the master. The rushing soldier on the far right of the cartoon for the Battle of Cascina (fig. 26) seamlessly stepped into his new role as forefront hauler by substituting a flopping infant held underarm and a bone fastened by a strip to the skeleton for the former’s original lance and piece of cloth. This astute transition and the demoted iconography of the Battle of Cascina mitigate the urge to ponder over the interrelations between the hauler and his prototype. In sharp contrast, the restaging of the Sistine God diverges from other visual references effected in the print by introducing a break in the homogeneity of imitation: its incongruity calls attention to the artificiality of representation. The self-contained form of the crouching figure makes its visual 35 Reilly, “Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo,” 318. 36 Reilly, “Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo,” 312, 318.

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Figure 26. Aristotile da Sangallo, after Michelangelo’s cartoon, Battle of Cascina, 1542, oil on panel, 76.4 × 130.2 cm. Holkham Hall, Norfolk. Photo: By permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of the Holkham Estate / Bridgeman Images.

origin conspicuous and imperative. To use the strategies of imitation defined by Thomas Greene in his pioneering study on Renaissance literary imitation, the forefront hauler exemplifies the basic “reproductive” imitation, which follows the source with fidelity, whereas the crouching man exemplifies the advanced “heuristic” imitation, which divulges its source at the same time as it distances itself by giving it a novel context and voice.37

Witchcraft, Inversion, and Heresy Why did the artist model the crouching man on the figure of God, an entity of the utmost signification, when he might have selected a neutral model, such as the frequently invoked figure of the rear-viewed climbing bather in the Cascina cartoon? How does the dramatic restaging of the God of the Creation into as outrageous a context as witchcraft impart meaning to the work? What implications do the rearrangement and reshaping of that figure in a denuded and brutish portrayal entail? Emison identifies this figure as the Devil, “a perverse rival of Michelangelo’s Sistine Creator,” but she does not entertain the possibility that this figure accommodates the 37 Greene, The Light in Troy, 28–53. Greene’s “eclectic” imitation, situated between the “reproductive” and the “heuristic,” is demonstrated by the print’s allusion to several sources. See the discussion below.

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very identity of his model.38 In what follows, I invest Emison’s idea with a suitable theoretical context and explore how discourses on witchcraft enrich this figure with further significations. An interpictorial reading of the crouching man in a dialogue with his model shows how this figure was prudently crafted to embody two interconnected key concepts relating to witchcraft: inversion and heresy. The crouching man, in his reversed body and flagrantly exposed buttocks, genuinely manifests the deeply entrenched conception of witchcraft as a topsy-turvy domain, denoting moral and social misrule.39 This idea has its origins in classical literature, where witches such as Meroe and Medea were ascribed the supernatural power to turn the world upside down.40 As described in chapter 1, in early modern doctrines the concept of inversion reverberated in the imagined sabbath rituals rendering obeisance to the Devil, specifically the osculum infame (the shameful kiss) and the ritualized reversal of the proper manner of approach (with one’s back towards the Devil). The bared posterior, a leitmotif of the mundus inversus, had been imported by this time by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien from carnival culture and the iconography of the upside-down world to feature in scenes of witchcraft.41 In addition to the inverse transposition of his body and its attendant meanings, the crouching man is subjected to gender-role reversal. As Stuart Clark argues, since the construction of inversion necessitates binary thinking, hierarchical polarities played a central role in theories of witchcraft. The popular early modern dogma that witches were preponderantly of the female sex reflects the male/ female polarity and the symbolic correlation of men with positive attributes and of women with the negative counterpart vices. Female witches were believed to overturn gender hierarchy in a twofold manner: as the Devil’s accomplices, witches acquired the demonic power to invert nature, and as evil women, witches rebelled against the ecclesiastical and patriarchal efforts to circumscribe the social and economic role of women. 42 The four men yoked to the skeletal chariot in the Stregozzo are evidently subservient to the witch and ready to do her bidding, yet it is her relationship with the crouching man that emphatically enacts and conveys gender role reversal. Although the witch and the crouching man are physically 38 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 633. God’s exposed bottom may have its origins in the double meaning of the Vulgate translation of “you shall see my back” to “videbis posteriora mea” (Exodus 33:23), posteriora meaning both backside and posterior. 39 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 31–93. 40 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.8 (Meroe); and Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.199–211 (Medea). See Spaeth, “The Terror that Comes in the Night,” 240–41; and Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag.” 41 Notable examples are Baldung’s Weather Witches, Witch and Dragon, and Three Witches, and Dürer’s Four Witches and Witch Riding on a Goat. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 11–13; and Hults, The Witch as Muse, 96–98. 42 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 11–13, 69–79, 119–33. On witches dominating men in Roman literature, see Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag,” 44–45, 55–57; and Stratton, Naming the Witch, 71–105.

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apart, common aspects, along with their alignment on the vertical axis, encourage a joint, mutually reflexive interpretation. Both man and witch possess a repellent body and countenance, and both crouch indecorously on skeletal creatures. The means of their cruelty complements each other visually—his cleft stick, festooned with flaccid penile sinews, inversely echoes her pincer-like hand, clutching an infant by his head. These affinities, no less than his conceivable function as a collector of dismembered lifeless penises, may identify the crouching man as the witch’s accomplice, a stregone in his own right. In another sense, however, their parallelism lays stress on hierarchical relations. The crouching man’s location beneath the witch signals his role as her subordinate. His apprehensive, upflung gaze, as though beseeching or supplicating a higher power, betrays an awareness of his implicit inferiority. His bestial posture and proximity to horned beasts heighten his emasculation by conjuring up the contumely of cuckoldry and, by extension, of effeminacy—becco (he-goat) and cornuto (horned). The collection of severed flaccid penises bespeaks his own emasculation. The rendering of a submissively crouching man beneath a seated dominatrix invites associations with the legendary episode of Phyllis and Aristotle and the symbolic, time-honored layout of the victor above the vanquished in images of triumphal processions.43 Moreover, the convergence of body and gender inversions afflicting the crouching man harks back to two images that directly inspired the Stregozzo. The riding old witch bears resemblance to Dürer’s witch in respect to her profile, repulsive physiognomy, rippling hair, and full-throated scream (fig. 5). Gripping a phallic horn signifies sex reversal, and the somersaulting putto demonstrates body inversion. The Stregozzo also shares common aspects with Andrea Mantegna’s Battle of the Sea Gods (fig. 27). Both prints introduce a violent fantasy of energetic male nudes, hybrid creatures, animal skulls, horn blowers, and a domineering hag, in a shallow, longitudinal space against a backdrop of reeds. This hag, identified as Invidia (Envy), bears a closer resemblance to the Stregozzo witch than does Dürer’s witch, especially in view of the pendulous breasts, evident musculature, and hair arrangement. A rear-viewed statue of Neptune is oblivious to the havoc Invidia wreaks in his maritime kingdom—literally behind his back. In respect to Giulio’s own work, the crouching man is comparable to the male partner in the Modi series which Giulio drew about the same time (fig. 21). 44 Both 43 On the “Power of Women” topos in Italian art, see, for example, Jacobson-Schutte, “Triofno delle donne”; and Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 265–78. 44 For a comparable example, see Findlen, “Humanism, Politics and Pornography,” 103–5. In disentangling figures from the Modi copulation scenes and then recasting them in a narrative in a way that echoes or subverts their original role, the Stregozzo anticipates (and may have been a model for) the majolica plates painted by Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo. In one plate, one of the men liberated from the kingdom of women by Astolfo, a character in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, is depicted in rear-view, crouching beneath

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Figure 27. Andrea Mantegna, Battle of the Sea Gods, ca. 1475–80, engraving from two plates, 28.5 × 43 cm. (left) and 28.6 × 37.5 cm. (right). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

are seen from the back, naked and crouching, and both are deployed in relation to a naked woman, albeit in reversed positions of domination and subordination. The link of the Stregozzo to a scene of copulation underlines the witch’s carnal lust and likens her dominance over the crouching man to a sexual conquest; at the same time, it heightens his effeminacy, sterility, and, perhaps, sodomitic desire.45 There is great and daringly sacrilegious irony in employing an image of God to model a figure that conveys the idea of the “world upside down”—a world where God is absent. This irony is underlined by the “appropriate selection” of a back-viewed God figure to emblematize topsy-turviness. Evidently, God’s descent into the realm of witchcraft is pregnant with signification. According to Emison, the Sistine God represents the Devil, who solicits the osculum infame. Given that the crouching man acts as cipher for the upside-down a horse; Talvacchia, “Professional Advancement,” figs. 9 and 16. In another plate, Death of the Woman of Sestos (1532), the man crouching on the ground is similar to the Stregozzo figure in his demeanor and placing beneath a seated woman. This visual link is observed by Turner, “Plate with The Death of the Woman of Sestos,” 217. 45 Male witches in Italy were held up to opprobrium for allowing themselves to be seduced into sodomitic sex by demons assuming the shape of young boys. Herzig, “The Demons’ Reaction to Sodomy.” That the nude men in the Stregozzo connote sodomy was suggested in Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 626; and Hults, The Witch as Muse, 43.

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world, his identification as the ruler of that world seems reasonable. The conflation of the Devil and God in this figure echoes the core belief of witches’ heresy that the Devil is God. The Spanish inquisitor Nicolau Eymeric established the heretical nature of demonic sorcery in his influential Directorium inquisitorium (Handbook of the Inquisitors) of 1376. To the question of under which circumstances magic practitioners would be accused of heresy, he answers: “Whoever, therefore, offers sacrifice to demons considers the demon as God and shows himself to believe the demon to be the true God by offering external signs. By which deeds they are to be considered heretics.”46 Identifying the crouching man as a deified Devil skips a critical stage of interpreting this figure as a debased God. In fact, God’s degradation is activated by the very procedure of extracting the figure of God from an iconographically venerable context and implanting it in a scene of witchcraft. The presence of the debased God registers the witch’s heretic culpability—the renunciation of God and the worshiping of the Devil. According to Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches) of 1486—arguably the most influential tract against witches, which by 1520 was issued in thirteen reprints (all in Latin)—the witches’ pact with the Devil caused multifarious injury to God’s creation: “The heresy of sorceresses uses 46 Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 125.

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agreements that are not merely expressed but ratified as treaties, and for this reason it is crazed with the desire to insult the Creator and harm His creations in every way.”47 In the introduction to the vernacular edition of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strix, titled Strega, o delle illusioni del Demonio and published in 1524, its translator, Leandro Alberti, responds to the 1523 execution of ten alleged witches in the town Mirandola: “There was discovered during the past year a great wicked and cursed game of the Lady, where God was denied, blasphemed, and mocked … and where other most blasphemous works against our Christian faith were performed.”48 The viewer may appreciate the irony in transposing the omnipotent Creator from a scene of Creation to a diametrically opposed scene of witchcraft, in which he dishonorably cowers beneath the witch, his pitilessly bared ass signifying his susceptibility to ridicule. From his inferior position, the reversed tumbled down God forlornly witnesses the witch destroying his perfect creation and taking infants—the quintessence of God’s creation—as spoils in her triumphal procession. 49 A complementary framework for investigating the humiliated God in the Stregozzo consists in the theological concept of divine permission, established by St. Augustine and perpetuated by early modern writers who conceptualized witchcraft as “a complete Christian theory of reality.”50 According to the Malleus maleficarum, witchcraft requires the presence of three forces: the witch, the Devil, and the permission of God—a cardinal premise which went on to become the core of witchcraft theory over subsequent decades.51 This premise resonates in the Stregozzo, where the three figures are united by a vertical axis: the witch exercises her supernatural powers thanks to two upsurging forces, the demonic (incarnated in the chimera) and the divine (the crouching man). Yet the depiction of a feeble, disconcerted God instigates an oft-raised skeptical conundrum as to whether God permitted witches to wreak havoc or was unable to stop them. Although Kramer 47 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 120 (1.2). Jacobus Sprenger is credited as co-writer but most likely had a minor contribution; see Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 18–19; and Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 54–55. On the considerable impact of this treatise on the writings of Italian demonologists, see Baroja, The World of the Witches, 104–8; and Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy,” 33, 50n. 4. 48 Pico della Mirandola, Libro detto Strega, 2v: “Essendosi scoperto l’anno passato, Illustre Signora, costì quel tanto malvagio, scelerato e maladetto Giuoco detto della Donna, dove è rinegato, biastemato e beffato Iddio, et anchor concolcata colli piedi la croce santa, dolce refrigerio de fedeli Christiani e seguro stendardo, e dove anche vi sono fatte tante altri biasimevoli opere contra della nostra santissima fede.” 49 For triumphal processions, see Pinelli, “Feste e trionfi,” 2:279–350; and Starn and Partridge, Arts of Power, 164–68. On the Stregozzo as a triumphal procession, see Albricci, “Lo stregozzo,” 56; Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 626, 631; and Cholcman, “The Riddle of the Witch of Triumph.” 50 Quote from Stephens, Demon Lovers, 49. 51 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 92 (1.1); and Kramer, 24–25, for Christopher Mackay’s discussion on the role of God in the Malleus.

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vehemently rejects the claim that God is unable to forestall witches, the extended discussion engendered by these topics testifies to its potential volatility.52 A deified Devil, a degraded God, an incapable God, God as an ironic epitome of the upside-down world—each of these overlapping and contradictory identities highlights early modern witchcraft as a perversion of Christianity and as an idea fundamentally grounded in opposition and inversion.53 The distance between the respectable figure of God in the Sistine Chapel and the debased, demonized God in the Stregozzo is chasmal, so that the crouching man transcends a “heuristic” imitation and demonstrates a “dialectical” imitation. The latter imitation—the most praiseworthy kind according to Greene—occurs when the text is incompatible with the source to the extent that its oppositional voice may be read as an implicit criticism of its source or as a parody.54 Giulio Romano rendered the Sistine God as a Raphaelesque parody, displaying God with intense ironic and satirical disrespect. Lending further credence to the identification of Giulio as the print’s designer, the crouching man perfectly conforms to the three fundamental characteristics in Giulio’s art identified by Manfredo Tafuri: “A pleasure in broken or syncopated rhythms, the poetry of contrasts, and the mixture of seriousness and wit.”55 This reassessment of the crouching man casts Ribera’s modifications in a new light (fig. 19). I propose that excising formal eccentricity and indecorousness were not his sole or even chief incentive to alter the original figure; the skepticism and sacrilege inherent in the figure’s cognateness to the Sistine God must have seemed far more excruciating and inflammatory (especially for those not receptive to the ironic tone). That Ribera was aware of the visual resemblance to the Sistine God is evinced by his effort to modify the crouching man without undermining the Michelangelesque spirit. In the revised version, the figure, no longer hovering but climbing, strikes the viewer as a descendant of the Cascina climbing bather and of the handful of souls in the Sistine Last Judgment.

The Chimera To identify the chimera as a diabolical incarnation alone, treating it akin to the other, partly occluded ram-headed chimera and the two goats, is to underplay its novel form, sheer visibility and prominence, baffling immobility, and vertical alignment with the two key figures in the print—aspects that invite deeper significations beyond any 52 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 213 (1.11). 53 On the Devil as God’s ape, see Clark, Thinking with Demons, 80–93. 54 Greene, The Light in Troy, 43–48. 55 Tafuri, “Giulio Romano,” 16.

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iconographic constraints. As observed in the introduction, monsters were intrinsically endowed with meaning. Mark Dorrian asserts that “the monster’s potency as a sign derives from the opacity of its signification. With the loss of formal coherence and unity … it incites interpretation.”56 The word chimera, which since the medieval era served as a generic term designating every possible composite, became, as Ginevra Bompiani points out, “an infinite Signifier,” whether an allegory, an icon, or an emblem.57 Early modern Europe experienced a cultural impetus to interpret monstrosities in multivalent directions. To take a single celebrated example, the abnormal birth of the Ravenna Monster in 1506 was treated by one writer as a prodigy of war and by another as a moralizing summa of sins corresponding to its body parts. The wide circulation of its image through drawings and prints most likely spawned additional readings.58 The Stregozzo chimera is an imaginary rather than a “real” monster (anomalous or unreal human), yet it possesses sufficient merits to inspire interpretation.59 Its novel configuration of multiple body parts had a potential appeal for the erudite viewer, who might approach it as a kind of hieroglyph or riddle to be deciphered. It is framed by witchcraft, thought at the time to be prodigious.60 Its unidentifiable mixture, neutralizing premeditated symbols of and perceptions about concrete monsters, invites speculative meanings. In addition, the proximity of the fantastic hybrid to the God-like figure of the crouching man invokes the early sixteenthcentury perception of monsters as God’s own creation, either as a marvel of nature, implicitly glorifying the deity, or as an error of nature, signaling his wrath. These observations aside, I am not proposing to interpret the chimera as a prodigy, a moral emblem, or a sign of God, nor am I intending to attach symbolic meaning to individual body parts. Rather, it is my contention that the chimera—embedded in a work of art rather than an informative illustration—serves as a poetic vehicle that negotiates thematic, formal, and aesthetic issues emanating from the print itself. The sole sixteenth-century comment on the Stregozzo, in Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte della pittura (1584), focuses entirely on the chimera. In his chapter on the form of frightening monsters, Lomazzo contrasts the chimera with pictorial and literary monsters—specifically a pair of multiheaded creatures. In Dürer’s print of the Apocalypse, the “ancient serpent with seven crowned heads of diverse animals and with so many necks joined to the monstrous body to show its wicked 56 Dorrian, “The Monstrous and the Grotesque,” 312. 57 Bompiani, “The Chimera Herself,” 395. On the ambiguity of hybrids, see also Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 156. 58 Niccoli, Prophecy and People, chap. 2; and Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 177–82. 59 In early modern Europe, the classification of monsters was permeable; see Davies, “The Unlucky, the Bad and the Ugly.” 60 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 369, points out in the chapter “The Witch as Portent”: “That the activities of demons and witches were very often prodigious was self-evident.”

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and pestiferous nature … suffices to surpass the bizarre forms of the Hydra of Hercules, of the enormous filthy creature [smisurato animalaccio] represented in the Stregozzo of Buonarotti, which sheet was issued as a print by Marcantonio of Bologna, and of other monsters described by the ancients and by the modern Boiardo, Ariosto, and others.”61 Lomazzo is silent as to why Dürer’s Beast of the Apocalypse surpasses all other monsters. Had he primarily valued originality, the composite in the Stregozzo would have triumphed. The Stregozzo chimera is morphologically unprecedented, comprising a leonine skeleton, a toothed bird skull crowned by outward-curving horns, a second avian head, full-fleshed, tucked under the ribcage and sporting a flappy elephantine ear, a spiky feathered neck, and two dissimilar pairs of webbed claws. This bewildering composite defies several constraints in relation to typical ancient or medieval mereologically concocted monstrosities. First, it departs from the binary division of mythological hybrids into upper and lower regions. Second, the numerical anomaly denoted by the two heads diverges from the natural correspondence of limbs that characterizes the majority of the literary monsters. Third, unlike legendary multiheaded monsters, such as Cerberus and the Hydra, the two heads unconventionally issue from different parts of the body. Lastly, its idiosyncratic departure from the norm culminates in the uncanny fusion of flesh and bones, infringing the material boundary between the living and the dead. Taken together, these nonpareil oddities amount to the strangest concoction. The discursive context of hybrid creatures as paradigmatic of artistic invention is well known.62 For Horace, an incoherent poem characterized by variety instead of unity is analogous to a picture of a hybrid. He memorably opens his Ars poetica with the following censure: “If a painter chose to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread feathers of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely woman ends below in a black and ugly fish, could you, my friends, 61 Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, 678: “Et questo serpente antico con sette faccie d’animali diversi coronati & tanti colli congionti al corpo mostruoso per di mostrare le malvagie, & pestifere nature fue, fù rappresentato come si vede in stampa nel apocalisse di santo Giovanni per Alberto Dürero, & questo basta à superare le bizarre forme de l’idra d’Hercole, del smisurato animalaccio rappresentato nel stregozzo dal Buonarotto, la qual carta vien fuori in stampa tagliata da Marco Antonio Bolognese & d’altri mostri descritti da gl’ antichi, & dal moderno Boiardo, Ariosto, & altri, i quali in ciò hanno levato tutto il meglio che si potesse circa tali mostri & serpeti imaginare.” According to Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, animalaccio means “a filthy creature.” With this word Vasari describes Leonardo’s chimerical Medusa: “da la moltitudine de’ quali variamente adattata insieme cavò uno animalaccio molto orribile e spaventoso” (“by adapting various parts of this multitude [of animals], he created a most horrible and frightening monster”); Vasari, Le vite, 4:21; and Vasari, The Lives, 288. 62 Bundy, “‘Invention’ and ‘Imagination,’” 543; Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea, 121–35; Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia,’” 368–69; Chastel, “Sens et Non-Sens,” 185–86; Summers, Michelangelo, 103–43; and Moffitt, “An Exemplary Humanist Hybrid.”

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if favored with a private view, refrain from laughing?”63 Around 1400, Cennino Cennini overturned the Horatian stricture on such fanciful combinations, proclaiming at the very outset of his Libro dell’arte that a painter, like a poet, is free to compose invisible creatures, such as centaurs, from his imagination.64 Subsequently, heterogeneous anatomical abnormalities were largely accepted as symbolic constructs derived from the free enjoyment of artistic license, to such an extent that chimere became synonymous with invenzione and fantasia. These observations notwithstanding, the process of forging a chimera is hardly divorced from the sensory world.65 Leonardo da Vinci instructed artists to compose their imaginary creatures from naturalistic parts of animals to achieve a verisimilar fiction: “Take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine,” and so on.66 This combinatory fantasia received full praise in a dialogue between Michelangelo and Diego Zapata reported by Francisco de Hollanda (1538–48). Replying to Zapata, who admits his unease about the hybrid creatures in Roman grottesche, Michelangelo defends artists who painted hybrid creatures, which “can really only be called well-invented or monstrous,” and maintains that Horace’s statement about the freedom of painters and poets “does not at all blame painters, but praises and favors them.”67 While virtually any hybrid in Renaissance art could emblematize artistic fantasia, the chimera in the Stregozzo activates the problematics of invention and imitation that explicitly emerge from the print. The status of the hybrid as pure invention is brought out against the density of artistic references contained in the print—both ancient and contemporary, Italian and Northern.68 The inspiring works by Mantegna, Dürer, and Michelangelo have already been observed in the preceding discussion. An all’antica mode dominates the scene. Bacchic processions on Roman sarcophagi resonate in the lateral movement of densely packed and vibrant figures arranged in the print’s foreground and in the friezelike effect achieved by the illusory projection of figures brightly silhouetted against the dark backdrop. A few individual figures emerge from the classical and Renaissance visual repository of bacchanalian processions: the goat-riding horn-blower, the Silenus-resembling man crouching beneath the witch, and the vanguard marcher brandishing aloft a detached hoof.69 63 Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, 451. 64 Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook, 1–2. 65 Swan, “Counterfeit Chimeras.” 66 Da Vinci, The Literary Works, 1:292–93. 67 De Hollanda, Four Dialogues on Painting, 60–63. 68 For the print’s visual sources, see Tietze-Conrat, “Der Stregozzo”; Battisti, L’antirinascimento, 156; Albricci, “Lo stregozzo”; Mesenzeva, “Dürer und die Antike,” 195–97; Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 625–27; Zika, Exorcising Our Demons, 388–90; and Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 282–85. 69 Satyrs brandishing detached hoofs feature in a print attributed to Zoan Andrea (Zucker, The Illustrated Bartsch, 262–63, cat. no. 6a-b), and in Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1519–23, National Gallery, London). An overturned dead horse is drawn in Michelangelo’s Bacchanal of Children (1532–33, Windsor Castle).

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Several other figures transposed from Italian art are identifiable. A couple of infants were migrated from Marco Dente and Marcantonio’s prints of the Massacre of the Innocents.70 And the porter bringing up the rear of the procession synthesizes a figure on a sarcophagus relief of Hercules and a figure in the engraving The Sacrifice of Pan designed by Raphael and Giulio Romano. This mélange of artistic references, aside from demonstrating an emulative ambition to rival and surpass ancient and contemporary artists, gives rise to the intense debate among Renaissance humanists as to whether a perfected style results from imitating a single model or many.71 Famously, the matter was taken up in a series of polemical letters, the first exchanged between Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cortesi (mid-1480s), the second between Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Pietro Bembo (1512–13).72 Poliziano and Pico concurred that imitating several sources allowed the imitator to vaunt his capacity to merge and restage his models. This debate, originally applied to literature, ostensibly drew in artists and writers on art also. Giorgio Vasari, for example, praised Raphael for adding “some other details chosen from the best works of other masters,” by which “he created a single style out of many that was later always considered his own.”73 The Stregozzo confirms that eclectic sources can be forged into a single new style forming a single harmonious whole. The hybrid’s derivation and recomposition from diverse animal parts is analogous to the recombination of figures culled from several works of art into a single composition. The print and the chimera are both inventions developed from The Bacchic allusions reinforced witches’ violation of Christian norms by likening them to pagans and their nocturnal congregations to bacchanalian festivals. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 23. Satyrs and Bacchic motifs feature in Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen’s Saul and the Witch of Endor (1526, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); Carroll, “The Paintings of Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen,” 90–104. The conflation of witchcraft and paganism is compatible with the strategy embraced by inquisitors to unify and clarify mystifying testimonies of alleged witches—namely, to enhance their confessions with familiar codes drawn from past accounts. Ginzburg, “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,” refers, for example, to the tenth-century Canon Episcopi and the folkloric Wild Hunt. For further links between early modern witchcraft and the pagan culture, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 162–68. 70 The baby gripped by the foremost man resembles the dead baby on the stairs on the right-hand side in Marco Dente’s print (B.14:24.21); moreover, the foreshortened dead infant next to the witch resembles the left-most baby on the ground in Raimondi’s print (fig. 24). 71 On imitation in the visual arts, see Battisti, Rinascimento e Barocco, 175–215; Bolland, “Art and Humanism”; Rowlands, The Culture of the High Renaissance, 193–215; Shearman, Only Connect, 227–61; Ackerman, “Imitation”; and Gregory, Vasari and the Renaissance Print, 229–84. On imitation in literature, see Greene, The Light in Troy; Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature; Pigman III, “Versions of Imitation”; and McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance. 72 Greene, The Light in Troy, 171–96. Both epistolary exchanges are transcribed and translated in DellaNeva, Ciceronian Controversies, 2–124. 73 Vasari, Le vite, 4:207: “e mescolando col detto modo alcuni altri scelti delle cose migliori d’altri maestri, fece di molte maniere una sola, che fu poi sempre tenuta sua propria, la quale fu e sarà sempre stimata dagli artefici infinitamente.” Translation is from Vasari, The Lives, 334.

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imitation—one of art, the other of nature. The notion that composite creatures are paradigmatic of the blending of artistic sources is rooted in classical literature. Aristotle connects the centaur with the hybrid literary mode: “Equally, even if someone should produce mimesis in a medley of all the metres (as Chaeremon did in composing his Centaur, a hybrid rhapsody containing all the metres), he ought still to be called a poet.”74 Quintilian employs Horace’s centaur as a symbol of the “indiscriminate mixture of grand words with mean, old with new, and poetic with colloquial, the result being a monstrous medley.”75 Far from expressing an aesthetic failure of accumulating eclectic quotes into a misconceived medley, the Stregozzo chimera serves as a constructive microcosm of the pictorial field. It recapitulates and compresses the composition’s arrangement from disparate elements gleaned from miscellaneous sources, each individually discernible yet reconstituted into an original, exquisite print. In comparison with the recurrent paradigm of eclectic imitation in Renaissance art-theoretical discourse—Zeuxis assembling the beautiful Helen of Troy from the best parts of several women—the chimera, in its visible heterogeneity, effectively invokes the theoretical debate over the merit of several models versus a single one in accomplishing a perfect work. The chimera may in fact serve as a justification for the artistic patchwork in the Stregozzo, for just as the artist constructed the imaginary chimera from existing animal parts, so did he construct the imaginary realm of witchcraft from existing works of art. The Stregozzo itself was fashioned as a combinatory fantasia. Not only do artistic borrowings impart an eclectic appearance to the print; Hults evocatively observed that, in the Stregozzo, the “fluid juxtaposition and fusion of incongruent forms—heroic nudes, goats, grasses, birds, bones, and terrified babies—echo ornamental grotteschi.”76 Soon after its rediscovery around 1480 in Nero’s Domus Aurea, grottesche were keenly imitated by artists wishing to vaunt their imagination. The chimera is a cipher of this decorative genre.77 Like chimeras, grottesche decoration is combinatory, fragmentary, nonsensical, and excluded from nature and the rational system of language. This affinity was articulated by Anton Francesco Doni (1549), who compared grottesche to castles in the air, dreams, and chimere, all figments of the imagination.78 Significantly, the two principle laws of grotesques identified by André Chastel—the fusion of species and the negation of 74 Aristotle, Poetics, 33. 75 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 245 (8.3.60). On the “poetics of the hybrid,” see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 156–60. 76 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 42. 77 On the Renaissance reception of grottesche, see Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea, 121–35; Morel, Les Grotesques; Summers, “The Archaeology of the Modern Grotesque”; Connelly, The Grotesque, chap. 2; and Zamperini, Le Grottesche, 91–195. 78 Doni, Disegno, 22v.

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space—are entwined in the Stregozzo: the chimera demonstrates the former, and its not-quite rider, the latter.79 His acrobatic suspension above the chimera conjures up the grotesques’ intricate choreography of lithe, gravity-defying figures evolving vertically from one instantiation to another. The crouching man’s discrepancy in scale adheres to the manner in which grotesques violate the Albertian decorum of perspectival laws of diminution.80 This figure echoes, moreover, the perpetually metamorphic nature of grotesques.81 A viewer sensitive to the transformative factor in witchcraft might infer from the crouching man’s positional bestiality that he is caught in the midst of transformation (or imagines he is).82 Lastly, in demonstrating the upside-down world through reversals of body, gender, and religion, the crouching man reflects the nonmimetic imagery of grotesques, which breaks the rules of resemblance.83 Imbued with the traits of grottesche, the chimera and the crouching man serve as the print’s symbolic nucleus, articulating the artist’s compositional method of assemblage and eclecticism, thereby advancing his proclamation of creative liberty. The close proximity of the chimera to a figure modeled on the Creator emphasizes that the former is a creation wrought not by God but by the artist as alter deus (other god), as Leon Battista Alberti eulogized him.84 Leonardo attributed to the artist the creative power to constitute an alternative world to that of God: “If [the artist] wishes to see monstrous things which might terrify or which would be buffoonish and laughable or truly pitiable” or “he wishes to produce … cool spots in 79 Chastel, La grottesque, 49–52. 80 Alberti, On Painting, 59 (2.39). 81 Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea, 73, perceives the grotesque as a perpetual metamorphosis (“perpétuelle métamorphose”) of one form into another. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317, characterizes the grotesque body as “a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed.” 82 The question of whether or not this figure undergoes transformation would have been swiftly resolved had the artist depicted an active transformation in full swing; nevertheless, the intrinsic logic of the apprehension of witchcraft requires indirectness and absence. As Walter Stephens explains, to picture the moment a man turns into a beast would be improper, because a direct corporeal transformation would counteract the delusory trait of this phenomenon and would mark it as real. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 296. Reports of men turning into werewolves in Italy were rare, yet ancient stories about animal transformations were integrated into witchcraft tracts, mostly to underline their diabolical deception. Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 433–34 (2.1.4), demonstrates the delusionary experience of transmutations into beasts through biblical and mythological cases of transformations, for example, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. A particularly germane image is Lucas Cranach’s woodcut Werewolf (ca. 1510), where a disheveled man crawls on all fours amid dismembered human bodies with a hapless baby dangling from his mouth. On lycanthropy, see Duni, “What about Some Good Wether?” 83 For the “upside-down world” as a proclamation of artistic license, see Moxey, “Hieronymus Bosch and the ‘World Upside Down.’” 84 Alberti, On Painting, 45 (2.25–26). On the divine origins of artistic creativity, see Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 138; and Emison, Creating the Divine Artist.

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hot weather,” he can, because “he is their lord and god.”85 This notion goes hand in hand with the thesis of the divine origins of artistic creativity. According to Dürer, “if [the artist] so wished, through the power of God he would daily spill out and make new forms of men and other creatures that nobody has ever seen or thought of before.”86 Irony is resurgent: a dilapidated version of Michelangelo’s God is squeezed in between two forces that challenge his Creation—the diabolical witch and the divino artista represented by his invention. Therefore, as much as the Stregozzo depicts the triumph of the witch, it celebrates the triumph of the artist himself.

Witchcraft and Monstrosity The chimera provokes a discussion of the monstrous and heterogenous aspects of witchcraft, producing a chain of analogies with etymological, somatic, and auditory dimensions. The analogue of the witch and the chimera invokes misogynistic literature, which often degraded women as inferior or corrupt by resorting to animal similes and metaphors. One antecedent source for equating women with monsters is Aristotle, who claimed that the births of females were accidents of nature.87 Aristotle’s speculation was given an exacerbating twist by Boccaccio, who turned Aristotle’s dictum “woman is an imperfect man” into “woman is an imperfect animal.”88 A similar method of denigration recurs in comparative theories of physiognomy, according to which the resemblance of an individual’s body parts to certain animals determines his or her characteristics. The pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomonica, a popular text in the Renaissance, “proved” the superiority of man by comparing the strong, proportioned bodies of the male animals to weak, ill-proportioned bodies of the female animals.89 Hybridity finds expression in the witch’s identity and behavior. Maxwell Paule has pointed out that Horace portrays the witch Canidia as a human-animal hybrid, describing how she claws at the earth and tears a lamb limb from limb with her teeth. The malefic ingredients she gathers are equally evocative of her animalistic character: eggs, smeared by the blood of a ghastly frog, hint at her own abominable foulness; the feather of the strix suggests her propensity for plundering 85 Quoted from Da Vinci, Leonardo on Painting, 32. 86 Quoted from Parshall, “Graphic Knowledge,” 398. 87 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 401 (4.3.767b.8–9): “Anyone who does not take after his parents is really in a way a monstrosity, since in these cases Nature has in a way strayed from the generic type. The first beginning of this deviation is when a female is formed instead of a male.” 88 Boccaccio, Corbaccio, 133: “La femina è animale imperfetto.” This claim is reiterated in Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 165 (1.6). 89 Aristotle, Minor Works, 109–21 (chaps. 5–6). On this treatise’s popularity in the Renaissance, see Summers, “David’s Scowl,” 113–15.

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and kidnapping; the bones snatched from the mouth of a starving dog evoke her pitiless savagery.90 A sonnet by fifteenth-century Florentine poet Giovan Matteo di Meglio scorns an old woman for her wickedness and sexual voracity by calling her a witch (maliosa), a prostitute, and a procuress; she is rendered with a hybrid body and a pedigree detailing her animal bloodline. She is a “rough offspring of a she-wolf and a fox, raging she-dog … promiscuous mother of a bull and a boar, descended from strange and low progeny, crazy, drunk, rude bastard; born of a beast, with chained feet … and she has her hole filled where the mouse lives.” As Patrizia Bettella observes, the sonnet underscores “the danger that lies in a hybrid figure crossing the boundaries of the human and animal worlds.”91 With an added measure of gravity, the Malleus maleficarum vindicates the alleged vast preponderance of practitioners of the female sex in witchcraft by enumerating woman’s numerous imperfections, pertaining to her uterus, voice, posture, gait, intellect, memory, personality, and carnal desire. In respect to the latter, Kramer cautions: “You do not know that woman is a chimera but you ought to know that that triple-shaped monstrosity is made lovely with the outstanding face of a lion, befouled with the stomach of a smelly she-goat and armed with the tail of a poisonous snake”; respectively, “her countenance is beautiful, her touch malodorous, and her interaction with others destructive.”92 This misogynistic trope of a meretriciously beautiful woman whose repulsive nature is progressively revealed harks back to the opening lines of Horace’s Ars poetica, where the neutral description of the male centaur gives place shortly to a queasy description of the female hybrid: “lovely woman ends below in a black and ugly fish.”93 The association between the deceptive Horatian female hybrid and the witch is evinced in Dante’s Purgatorio, where a deformed old woman is transformed by the pilgrim’s gaze into a “dolce serena” (lovely siren) whose destructive song is irresistible and to whom Virgil refers as “quell’antica strega” (that old witch).94 The sixteenth-century rifeness of such misogynistic diatribes and the visual resonance between the witch and the hybrid in the Stregozzo—through their parallel arrangement and grotesque profiles, drawing attention to the possibility of manifold meanings of monsters—must have beckoned the viewer to forge metaphorical and symbolical connections between them. Let us now examine how these connections operate visually in the engraving. 90 Horace, Satires 1.8.27; and Horace, Epodes 5.19–23. See Paule, Canidia, 32, 77–78. For more examples, see Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag,” 43–44. 91 Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 71–73. 92 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 169 (1.6). 93 For this insight, see Oliensis, “Canidia,” 107–38. 94 Dante, Purgatorio 19.58. Yavneh, “Dante’s ‘dolce serena.’” On the commentary of Francesco Buti (1324–1405) on Dante’s strega, see Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 125.

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Latin and Italian words for “witch” convey the witch’s inherent monstrosity. Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, known as Prierias, a Dominican friar and former inquisitor in Milan who became a Roman authority, explains in his 1521 De strigimagarum demonumque mirandi (On the Wonders of Witch-Sorceresses and Demons) that strix and lamia synonymously denote witches, since in their disposition and behavior, witches allude to the infernal female monsters Strix and Lamia in ancient Roman folklore. Strix is a screech owl that emits high-pitched vocalizations and sucks infants’ blood; Lamia tears apart her own children, a cruelty indicated by the nomenclature derivation from lania, the feminine of a butcher (lanius). Of the various time-honored forms associated with the Lamia, Prierias describes the Lamia—the Vulgate translation of Lilith, one of the wild beasts dwelling in the ruined land of Edom in Isaiah 34:11–15—as “a monstrous beast that has the feet of a horse but whose other bodily members mimic the human form and aspect.”95 The simultaneous understanding of the lamia as an equine-legged woman and a witch was later perpetuated by the German theologian Peter Binsfeld.96 In form and bodily demeanor, the Stregozzo witch echoes these monsters—her fabled synonyms. Like Strix, she screams at night, and like Lamia, she slaughters babies. The Lamia’s hybrid form, resembling that of an equine-legged woman, is evoked by the skeleton’s two hoofed leg bones emerging at the witch’s rear at a buckled, kinked angle that visually rhymes with her own bent legs. From another associational perspective, the chimera’s monstrosity corresponds to the witch’s grotesque body. The witch possesses a hybrid body in that her femininity is overthrown by masculinity in the physical properties of her appearance. This corporeal change is consistent with the theory of humors, according to which the desiccated bodily state of old women confounded their bodies with men’s.97 Her extreme muscularity also aligns with the belief that lustful and transgressive women—prostitutes and witches included—were often considered masculine.98 The witch’s protruding tongue and windswept ripples of hair are characteristics of the grotesque body—as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin—inasmuch as these appendages transgress the bodily boundaries and interpenetrate the world.99 The witch’s ample, 95 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 279–80. The Lamia is described as an equine-legged woman as early as the ninth century by the German bishop Haymo of Halberstadt; Haymonis Episcopi Halberstattensis, 260. This tradition was retrieved by Johannes Reuchlin (1475–76) and Vincenzo Cartari (1571); Reuchlin, Vocabularius breviloquus, s.v. “Lamia”; and Cartari, Le imagini de i dei, 263. For more sources, see Šedinová, “La raffigurazione della ‘Lamia.’” 96 Binsfeld, Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum, 370. 97 Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 290. 98 King, Women of the Renaissance, 189; Jones and Stallybrass, “Fetishizing Gender,” 101; and Rackin, “Historical Difference,” 42–43. 99 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 26, 303–67. For an evocative discussion of the witch’s body, see Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 338–42.

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coiling tresses intertwine with the poisonous vapor emanating from her lap-cradled jug, expressing the conviction that witches concealed malevolent charms in their hair (recalling the exhortation to inquisitors to swiftly shave detained witches).100 Her stuck-out tongue—a feature significantly absent from the figure’s prior models, Mantegna’s Invidia and Dürer’s witch—possesses linguistic and corporeal values.101 It implies the fate of her captive infants at the cannibalistic sabbath feast, and it indexes her malevolent incantations (the vapor uncoiling to one side of her open mouth imaginably infuses her voice with toxic spellbinding powers). The witch’s tongue grotesquely thrusts itself into the environment, vocally as well as physically. Her appalling voice acquires a figurative expression by means of an auditory assemblage. Lucan’s account of the Thessalian witch Erichtho is considered a basic textual source for the Stregozzo.102 I propose that this text constitutes not so much a source for the print’s content but rather a poetic allusion to the print’s ability to produce vocal sensation. Lucan vividly reports how Erichtho concocts a magic brew to conjure up Pompey’s son, who can predict the future, casting spells in her multitudinous voice: Lastly her voice, more powerful than any drug to bewitch the powers of Lethe, first uttered indistinct sounds, sounds untunable and far different from human speech. The dog’s bark and the wolf’s howl were in that voice; it resembled the complaint of the restless owl and of the night-flying screech owl, the shrieking and roaring of wild beasts, the serpent’s hiss, the beat of waves dashing against rocks, the sound of forests, and the thunder that issues form a rift in the cloud: in that one voice all these things were heard.103

The distinctive vocalizations of certain animals coalesce into an auditory hybrid. This composite of animal and natural sounds finds its visual parallel in the Stregozzo through a mixture of auditory effects: the processional horn lets off a penetrating clangor, the skeleton crackles, the chimera squawks, the ducks flap their wings, the babies whimper, and the reeds rustle in the wind. Above the multitudinous din, the bloodcurdling scream of the witch overlaps and merges with these varied strains forming a sensory experience of strident cacophony. As much as the hybrid subverts our impulse to name and classify it uniquely, it tempts us moreover to distinguish and identify each of its body parts. In mentally tagging the appendages of the various animals composing the hybrid, the viewer 100 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 552 (3.15). 101 On the double senses of the tongue, see Mazzio, “Sins of the Tongue.” 102 Campbell, “Fare una Cosa,” 603. 103 Lucan, The Civil War, 355 (6.685–93).

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Figure 28. Hans Baldung Grien, Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, 1510, chiaroscuro woodcut, 36.6 × 25.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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acts out a prevalent rhetorical means for informing an occurrence of witchcraft, namely, lists and accumulations. Lists of assorted compilations pervade literary records of witchcraft, ranging from magic paraphernalia to human and animal appendages, recipes of gory magic unguents, and quite generally any abnormality (such as Erichtho’s voice). Ancient and early modern writers alike itemize such lists of wondrous items with great delight. For instance, Ovid vividly enumerates countless ingredients in the brew prepared by Medea with the intention of rejuvenating her father-in-law, Aeson; it includes the wings and flesh of a screech owl, the entrails of a werewolf, the scales of a water snake, the liver of an old stag, and the eggs and head of a nine-year-old crow.104 Pietro Aretino relates in his Cortigiana (1525) that the bawd Aloigia contentedly inherited a paraphernalia of “lovely things” from her old mentor who had been burned at the stake for witchcraft: “a glass of bats’ blood, dead men’s bones, for torments and betrayals, owls’ claws, vultures’ hearts, wolves’ teeth, bears’ fat, ropes from people who’ve been hanged by mistake.”105 Such exuberant accumulations transpire in the Stregozzo chimera, whose very appearance recalls animal appendages blended in infernal potions; the witch is likely to be swilling just such a concoction in her jug. That this chimera is made of a skull and a skeleton draws attention to an oft-ignored aspect of composite creatures: the act of deconstruction that the process of composing hybrids entails.106 This act relates to Campbell’s argument that the Stregozzo parodies the artistic procedure of enlivening the dead wherein the chimera evokes the “recomposition of bodies by the ‘reverse anatomy’ of artists like Michelangelo” from the skeleton outward.107 When it comes to witchcraft, the concept of deconstruction takes a literal meaning: the hybrid’s skull and skeleton hint at the brutality perpetrated by the witch in the culling of animal and human body parts—the raw materials for her brews. The skulls and bones littering the ground in Baldung’s chiaroscuro woodcut (fig. 28) are precisely the ingredients from which artists mold their hybrids. The creative procedures of a heterogeneous nature taken by the witch and the artist—assembling ingredients required for witchcraft and amalgamating visual allusions for his composition—converge in the image of the chimera.

Conclusion Under the sway of the eclectic composition, the beholder of the Stregozzo is invited to devise interpretations from kaleidoscopic combinations. The crouching man, 104 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 361 (7.268–75). For magic recipes comprising animal parts, see also Horace, Epodes 5; Lucan, The Civil War 6.538–49, 6.667–80; and Seneca, Medea 670–843. 105 Aretino, “La Cortigiana,” 1:141 (2.6). 106 Hughes, “Dissecting the Classical Hybrid,” 104–5. 107 Campbell, “Fare una Cosa,” 603.

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prompting multiple associations that complement and collide with one another, variously plays the witch’s victim or her accomplice, a man being transformed into an animal or a signifier of the topsy-turvy world, God or the Devil. The chimera stimulates reflection on the witch’s body, nature, voice, and demonic province. The Stregozzo effects a complex meditation on the creative process, whereby the chimera and the crouching man operate within its visual and conceptual microcosm. The chimera in its self-referentiality and the crouching man in the artificiality of his representation serve as metapictorial devices that hint at the making of the print and emblematize the artist’s sovereignty. They demonstrate combinatory fantasia, the “world upside down,” and grottesche while negotiating artistic concerns relating to originality and imitation, including eclectic, heuristic, and dialectical imitations, the amount of visual quotes, the harmony among them, the degree of their disclosure, the integration of enigmatic figures into the composition, and boundaries of decorum. Significantly, the artist revealed his presence in the two figures that he assigned to conceptualize the idea of witchcraft. The associational and symbolic overtones patched in the chimera and the crouching man weave a fabric of comparable and divergent interests and practices of the witch and the artist. The chimera alludes to their engagement with creative procedures of a heterogeneous nature—the artist in amalgamating visual quotations from diverse sources and the witch in assembling ingredients required for magic. The witch dishonors God; the artist parodies Michelangelo’s image of him. Although the print resists reduction to a definite allegory or message in respect to the rivalry between the two, the Stregozzo celebrates the triumph of the witch as much as it celebrates the triumph of the artist himself.

Beyond the Stregozzo The reception of the Stregozzo chimera as a self-conscious display of artistic creativity and an analogy to the witch is borne out by two images. The first is an engraving by Master HFE, dully titled Marine Gods by Adam Bartsch and dated to the second quarter of the sixteenth century (fig. 29).108 A lateral procession composed of a man and woman atop a wagon pulled by mythological creatures and ceremonially led by horn blowers is reminiscent of Roman processional reliefs of Neptune and Amphitrite or Bacchus and Ariadne, yet is not restricted to any particular myth. The print is an incontrovertible descendant of Mantegna’s Battle 108 Boorsch and Spike, The Illustrated Bartsch, 299, cat. no. 3; Nagler, Die Monogrammisten, 3:325–26 (no. 3); and Harnet and Guédron, Beautés monstres, 79.

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Figure 29. Master HFE, Marine Gods, ca. 1530s, engraving, 17.1 × 39.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

of the Sea Gods, from which Master HFE drew the friezelike maritime setting, the dark screen of water foliage, and the horn-blowing, hippocampi-riding tritons. Equally, if not more, influential was the Stregozzo. Its imprint on Master HFE is apparent in his choice of a processional rather than a battle scene and in the magnificent addition of animal skeletons and novel chimeras. These observations aside, the print is by no means an etiolated reflection of the Battle of the Sea Gods and the Stregozzo—it is an active response to these works. In the same manner as these two engravings, Master HFE kept topicality to a minimum, throwing iconography into question. In so doing, he pursued his manifest objective—to vaunt the broad spectrum of his artistic prowess in imitation vis-à-vis invention—free from encumbrance or distraction. From left to right, his artistic range is visually demonstrated in three stages, from mimesis to fantasia. The first group, revolving around the couple in the wheeled wagon, demonstrates the artist’s observation of nature, most remarkably in a hovering gigantic bird skeleton, a smaller, soaring bird skeleton roped to the wagon, and a skeletal manikin pinned to the front of the wagon as if to announce its representative theme, in keeping with the custom of carnival carts. In the second group, tritons and hippocampi register the artist’s reproduction of legendary fiction. The third group of the intermingled humananimal chimeras at the forefront of the procession is where the artist boasts his combinatory fantasia. In composing his two chimeras, Master HFE apparently drew on the Stregozzo chimera. His chimeras are likewise equipped severally with an elephantine ear and two vertically arranged heads. The upper heads represent animal skulls fixed on a long neck—in the one case, the sheep skull is copied from Mantegna and in the other, the horned avian skull resembles the Stregozzo chimera. The lower heads are fully fleshed out and tucked in at the bottom. Deviating from his models, Master HFE incorporated human parts in his chimeras, including a grotesque face

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Figure 30. Accursio Baldi and Bastiano Marsili, after Raffaello Gualterotti, A Dragon Chasing after a Witch on a Chimera, in Feste nelle nozza del Serenissimo Don Francesco Medici gran duca di Toscana et della Sereniss sua consorte la Sig. Bianca Cappello, Florence, 1579, 21. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

(one bearded), belly, buttocks, two legs, and breasts. The animal-human blend with a conspicuously gendering appendage of breasts appears as if Master HFE assimilated the hag—the witch and/or Invidia—to his chimeras, pronouncing what the Stregozzo only intimates: that women are essentially monstrous (and monsters are typically female). The merging of the witch with the chimera is patently represented in another comparable image. To celebrate the second marriage of Francesco I de’ Medici to his Venetian mistress, Bianca Cappello, in 1579, Florentine playwright Raffaello Gualterotti wrote a festival book which includes a sbarra—a staged battle in which a barrier separates the combatants—to be performed in the Palazzo Pitti courtyard. Ten lavishly decorated chariots (some illustrated in the book) enter the stage one by one. In one of the chariots sits a bride, who relates to the audience how she has lost her beloved knight and has come to Florence to be reunited with him—a clear analogy to Bianca, who came to Florence to wed Francesco. Her narrative precedes a theatrical enactment of the knight’s fate. The evil enchantress (La Maga), trailed by a prodigious five-headed, fire-spitting dragon, emerges from the cave wherein the valiant knight, whom she has snatched from his bride, is held captive (fig. 30). Distaff in hand, the enchantress is clad in “an extremely beautiful purple silver dress, accessorized with many masks, and gems and things that match well with the purple color.” Most astonishingly, she rides on “a strange animal” (uno strano animale) composed from the body parts of diverse animals: “It had the feet of a bird, the head of a witch [la testa di strega],

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the horns of a goat, the back of a serpent, the tail of a scorpion. It spewed fire from the mouth, and two arms stretched out from the ears held two extravagant large lanterns.”109 In keeping with the rank implied by the pageantry, whose entourage and decoration reflect the status of the chariot-riders, this monstrous composite ought to be understood as an emblem of its wicked rider and her phantasmic realm. That this chimera’s head—the paramount body part that determines identity and serves as a visual synecdoche for the whole body—is that of a witch makes unequivocal the interchangeability of the chimera with the witch. The illustrator visually translated the “testa di strega” into a head with pendulous locks, repugnant physiognomy, and lolling tongue. At the same time, the design of the creature bears witness to the artist’s invenzione. The qualif ier strano in Gualterotti’s description of his hybrid was used in the Renaissance to applaud the artist’s novelty and fantasia. Significantly, Vasari describes two composites of diverse animal parts precisely as strano: Leonardo da Vinci’s Medusa painted on a small shield and the devils tormenting Saint Anthony in Martin Schongauer’s engraving.110 Gualterotti, it appears, made explicit what the Stregozzo subtly conveys; the chimera serves as both a symbolical analogy with the witch and an insignia of artistic creativity. The extent to which hybrids were intimately associated with witchcraft may be assessed from the early modern reception of a painting known by its modern title, Landscape with a Magical Procession, hanging in the Borghese Gallery, Rome (fig. 31). In it, a merry parade of prancing, cavorting human-animal hybrids and bearded elders bringing up the rear is crossing the countryside. The ovular processional contrivance is hitched to a prodigious camel-headed, ostrich-bodied creature, unexpectedly equipped with a human face by way of rectal opening; a wizened, malkin-like old man riding it face-to-back is ladling soup from a chamber pot into the gaping anal mouth. The painting, which carries the date of 1528, was produced by a Ferrarese artist, possibly Girolamo da Carpi or Benvenuto Garofalo.111 The 109 Gualterotti, Feste nelle nozze, 21: “Quindi dello scosceso masso si vide uscire la Maga, con bellissimo habito di tela d’argento pagonazza, accomodata con molte maschere, e gioie et lavori che con lo colore pagonazzo molto bene univano; l’acconciatura era bizarra come la maschera, con molti veli e svolazzi. Portava questa Maga una conocchia in mano, e cavalcava uno strano animale, con membri di diversi animali: egli haveva i pié d’uccello, la testa di strega, le corna di capra, il dorso di serpente, la coda di scorpione, et per la bocca vomitava fuoco; e delle orecchie uscivano due braccia che in mano havevano due stravaganti lanternoni.” On the 1579 sbarra, see Nagler, Theatre Festivals of the Medici, 49–57; Strong, Art and Power, 142–43; and Musacchio, “Raffaelo Gualterotti.” 110 On Leonardo’s Medusa: “la più strana e stravagante invenzione che si possa immaginare mai” (Vasari, Le vite, 4:23), and on the devils in Martin Schongauer’s Temptation of St. Anthony: “strane forme di diavoli” (Vasari, Le vite, 6:8–9). See Summers, Michelangelo, 213–14; and Barolsky, The Faun in the Garden, xv, 79. 111 For Da Carpi, see Della Pergola, Galleria Borghese, 1:47, and for Garofalo, see Turner, The Vision of Landscape, 138–43; and Gibson, Mirror of the Earth, 46. These scholars discuss style and authorship but pass

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Figure 31. Girolamo da Carpi (attr.), Landscape with Magic Procession, 1528, oil on canvas, 159 × 116 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo © Electa / Bridgeman Images.

artist’s appreciation of Northern art is unmistakable: the unbalanced landscape with the geological topography of the hollowed rock spur soaring on one side of the composition is a trademark of Joachim Patinir, and the fantastic hybrids disporting themselves in the train of the parade are descended from Hieronymus Bosch’s bestiary. In iconographical terms, the painting may be best understood as an exercise of fantasia. However, early commentators attempted to identify a specific subject. The inventory of the Borghese collection compiled in 1615–30 described the painting as “Un quadro in tela d’un paese con diverse fantasme che vanno in sergazzo.”112 The last word sergazzo is a misspelling of striazzo, strighezzo, or stregozzo in the Lombard phrase “andare in striazzo,” or “going to the witches’ sabbath.” Giacomo Manilli reinstated this meaning in his 1650 Borghese guide: “Processione chimerica di Streghe, con molte bizzarie di vedute” (a chimerical procession of witches, with many outlandish views).113 This explicit description—the over iconography entirely. All inventories and catalogues between 1603 and 1790 attribute the painting to Dosso Dossi; Bentini, Sovrane passioni, 190. 112 Bentini, Sovrane passioni, 190. 113 Manilli, Villa Borghese, 100.

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origin of the picture’s current title—is rather mystifying, given that no readily visible witches or witcheries appear to be present in the scene. The only plausible candidates are the goat-bearded and bewhiskered old men, but nothing in their general aspect or comportment supports such an identification. What then justifies the explicit identification of the scene as a procession of witches? One possible answer is intimated by the attribution to Dosso. The inventorial commentators perhaps recognized elements in the painting that struck a chord in relation to the Boschian hybrids populating the enigmatic Night of Dosso’s brother, Battista, and to Dosso’s own Sorceress (fig. 2)—a painting likely to have been transported from Ferrara to the Borghese Gallery at the same time as the Landscape with a Magical Procession, following the death of the last duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II d’Este, in 1597. The association of the painting with witchcraft might equally have been sparked by the popularity of infernal landscapes painted in the seventeenth century by North European artists during a stint in Italy—Jacob van Swanenburgh and Jan Bruegel the Elder in Naples, Adam Elsheimer in Rome, and Joseph Heintz the Younger in Venice. These paintings, eagerly collected by aristocratic families, such as the Collona and the Borromeo, display mountainous landscape punctured by bizarre processions of diminutive human figures and Boschian hybrids.114 Another answer lies in the procession’s adjunct chimerica, meaning both “imaginary” and “filled with chimeras.” Hybridity and inversion typified carnivals—indeed, the 1790 gallery inventory describes the scene as “a village with a masquerade”115—but to identify this procession as a carnival would be unsound. The parade traverses the countryside rather than an urban environment; instead of masked paraders, it involves imaginary creatures; and the staid elders strike an incongruous note with the exuberance of the jigging hybrids and rapid pace typical of carnivals. A parade of witches, on the other hand, well accords with all these features. The conceptualization of witchcraft as enacting a whimsical, upside-down realm of mischief was established to such an extent that seventeenth-century commentators did not need to see a witch to associate the painting with witchcraft. Apparently, by the seventeenth century whimsical monsters were so profoundly entangled in the popular imagination with the idea of witchcraft that the overt labeling required no more than the mere presence of hybrid creatures.

114 Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld, attributed to Jan Bruegel the Elder or Jacob van Swanenburgh, appears to be inspired by the Stregozzo. The parade entering from the right features a naked man pulling a skeletal monster by a chain, and a clothed woman sitting astride a huge skulled turtle and holding a jug and a string of sausages upon a stick. For the image, see Golahny, Rembrandt’s Reading, 62, f ig. 8. 115 Bentini, Sovrane passioni, 190.

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3.

Priapic Ride Gigantic Genitals, Penile Theft, and Other Phallic Fantasies Abstract: Parmigianino’s drawing of a witch riding a prodigious phallus, known today through two late print versions, has often been excluded from studies on early modern witchcraft and sexuality but is in fact indispensable to both. Its outward bawdiness belies a multilayered commentary on witchcraft lore and praxis. In each layer the phallus assumes a different function, oscillating between the literal and the figurative, the real and the fantastic. It relates, severally, to a man dominated by a witch, a castrated male organ, a demonic disguise, and a shielding amulet. Harboring sober ideas behind a superficially amusing facade, Witch Riding on a Phallus in effect canvasses a range of alternative reactions to the witchcraft phenomenon. Keywords: humor, upside-down world, demonic illusion, delusion, Evil Eye, amulet

With characteristic verve, the Venetian satirist Nicolò Franco composed the following sonnet-shaped riddle, one of the delicious bawdy poems in his La Priapea of 1541: “It does not have feet but goes in and out. It is disarmed, but it has great courage. It does not have an edge, but is sufficient to cause blood. … It seems a great miracle because without ears it hears every noise, because it has no nose and yet likes to smell. It has no eyes, but it sees where to go.” Alas, the solution to the riddle is given at its very outset: “A great thing is the cock (cazzo), if we want to look at it.”1 This riddle, whereby the penis receives a life of its own—perhaps that of a warrior, in extension of the sex-as-warfare metaphor—is but one example among a plethora of genital humor, metaphors, and animation in Italian Renaissance learned erotica.2 Indeed, as Patricia Simons points out, in early modern Europe “male genitals give rise to logorrhea, to countless slang terms, verbal jokes and insults, to written and 1 Nicolò Franco, Delle Rime, no. 42, in Mangone, Poesia erotican italiana, 78: “Gran cosa è ’l cazzo, se ’l vogliam guardare / Che non ha piedi, ed entra ed esce fuore / Ch’è disarmato ed ha così gran core, / Che non ha taglio, e puote insanguinare.” For discussion, see Frantz, Festum Voluptatis, 106–9. 2 Another example is Antonio Vignali’s La cazzaria (from cazzo, vulgar slang for “penis”), a ribald, albeit learned dialogue published in 1525–26.

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_ch03

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Figure 32. Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois Holding ‘Fillette’, 1982, photograph, 37.5 × 37.4 cm. Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

visual metaphors, double or multiple entendres, allusions, euphemisms and visual signifiers of power, puns, and play.”3 Her study shows the amplitude and variety of phallic symbols and double entendres in early modern art, from spades and lances to gourds and ladles. Less common at the time were artworks that reverse the path by which Franco’s riddle is intended to be deciphered: instead of employing phallic motifs, these artworks flagrantly display virile members that invite the viewer to tease out manifold concepts and notions. A modern example of such a direct phallic riddling would be Robert Mapplethorpe’s portrait of Louise Bourgeois, taken on the occasion of her first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1982 (fig. 32). Mignon Nixon evocatively argues that Bourgeois cradles under her arm her 1968 statue of an oversized penis entitled Fillette (little girl) in a way that parades “a suite of Freudian tropes: fetishism, penis envy, castration anxiety, femininity as the desire of a ‘little one,’ humor itself,”4 and that Fillette is staged in the photo as “a multiple object—baby, penis, 3 Simons, The Sex of Men, 70. 4 Nixon, “Posing the Phallus,” 125.

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phallus, double, erotic object, child self.”5 While Mapplethorpe and Bourgeois did not premeditate this photo as a visual riddle with a determinate set of answers, they were most likely cognizant of the possibility that her handling of the phallus would elicit from intellectual viewers some degree of psychoanalytic theorizing. This chapter explores the complementing and conflicting significations of the phallus generated in an image roughly contemporaneous with Franco’s Priapea. Though my analysis invokes some of the standard psychoanalytical issues—the Freudian anatomical penis versus the Lacanian symbolical phallus, castration fantasies, and the body itself as a phallus—my perspective is robustly cultural rather than psychoanalytic. An etching after a now-lost drawing by Parmigianino languished for nearly a century in a cupboard specially reserved for sexually explicit works in the Prints and Drawings Room of the British Museum, until it was published by Peter Webb in 1975.6 A prodigious occurrence transpires in the dead of night: a fully clad and booted witch rides astride an enormous zoomorphic phallus over a gloomy patch of ground strewn with a human skull and an animal jawbone (fig. 33). The phallus is furred and tailed. Hunched-up and cradling a distaff under her right arm, the witch does her best to rein in the phallus with her left. In front, an anthropomorphic winged devil flings his arms around the phallus in an effort to control and support its weight. Above, two unnaturally large owls are descending upon the witch at a swoop, while a hybrid quadruped, riding along at the rear, grips her shoulder from behind with one extended paw. This quaint and extraordinary performance electrifies a bustling knot of onlookers, among whom a bald man with two spindles protruding from his head. Aside from the attribution of the original, proclaimed in the abbreviated inscription Fran Parm inv[enit] (designed by Francesco Parmigianino) placed at the lower left of the print, no information as to authorship and date of execution is provided. More disconcerting still, whether this etching is a faithful copy of Parmigianino’s drawing is thrown into doubt by the existence of a second surviving version. The latter appears in a catalogue of reproductive prints produced in 1732 by the renowned French engraver Bernard Picart under the title Une Sorcière allant au Sabat (A Witch Going to the Sabbath). In this version, however, in addition to the tail and thick covering of hair present in the anonymous version, the phallus is embellished with clawed feet appended to the scrotum and animalistic facial features puncturing the glans (fig. 34). The difficulties raised by the lost drawing and the two printed versions in regard to authorship, chronology, and iconography—vexed issues that, along with sheer 5 Nixon, Fantastic Reality, 78. See also her “Psycho-Phallus,” 397–408. 6 Webb, The Erotic Arts, 120–21, and 345–65, for the Restricted Collection. The British Museum acquired the etching in 1874. The two printed versions only rarely have been reproduced and examined together. See Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 116–17; and Tal, “Witches on Top,” 87–159.

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Figure 33. Anonymous, after Parmigianino, A Witch Riding on a Phallus, 1530s, etching, 14.5 × 9.7 cm. British Museum, London. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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Figure 34. Bernard Picart, after Parmigianino, A Witch Riding on a Phallus, etching, second state, in Bernard Picart, Impostures innocentes, ou Recueil d’Estampes d’aprés divers peintres, Amsterdam, 1734, no. 12. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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prudery, may account for the scholarly negligence of this stunning image7—will be addressed in due course. For the moment, it suffices to point out that it cannot be ascertained whether the phallus in Parmigianino’s original was deprived of facial features and claws; and furthermore, given the central role of the phallus in the design, it is all but certain that Parmigianino would have wished the phallus to remain fully legible. Witch Riding on a Phallus possesses all the native prerequisites to elicit wonder, a knowing smile, or even an amused titter from the viewer, analogously to a few other early modern images featuring the virile member or a euphemistic surrogate thereof.8 The outward bawdiness is nonetheless but one amusing aspect of the design. A subtler kind of humor resides in the process of unfolding multiple meanings in the phallus and the scene as a whole, prompted by the design’s semantic structure and subject matter. As pointed out in the introduction, ambiguity and indecisiveness are intrinsic to an image of witchcraft. The realm of witchcraft is governed by unstable and transformable substances, hybrid creatures, deceptions, phantasms, delusions, and cryptic proceedings—components which destabilize the viewer’s confidence in the modality of vision, the boundaries between reality and fiction, the chronology of events, and the purpose and workings of magic. Thoroughly suffused with many of these ostensible components, Witch Riding on a Phallus defies traditional iconographic analysis and resists the attribution of a single meaning. Any attempt at a unitary reading would miss the point, for its comic kernel lies precisely in the multiplicity of meaning, where all overlapping or conflicting meanings are equally pertinent. Thematically, Witch Riding on a Phallus has one anchoring in early modern images of witchcraft and another in Italian Renaissance erotica; accordingly, it is reproduced both in Charles Zika’s The Appearance of Witchcraft and in James Grantham Turner’s Eros Visible.9 Given the abundance of recent scholarship on early modern imagery of sexuality and witchcraft, it is surprising that an image so clearly speaking to both topics has garnered but scant attention. The scholars who do refer to Parmigianino’s image perfunctorily explain the obscene conceit of a phallus-riding witch as an 7 Arthur Popham, in his 1971 magisterial three-volume catalogue of Parmigianino’s drawings, reproduced only Picart’s version, although he most likely knew the other version. Popham, Catalogue, cat. O.R. 100, pl. 464. Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 116–17, ascribes this omission to Popham’s prudery. 8 The most comprehensive study on the humor of phallic images is Simons, The Sex of Men. Sara Matthews-Grieco observes that artists employed the virile member and its metaphors when they wished to play down a sexual print by humor rather than by issuing a moral warning, in which case the female nude was displayed; Matthews-Grieco, “Satyrs and Sausages,” 37. For objects, foodstuffs, and animals as euphemism for penile morphology or terminology, see also Wind, “Pitture ridicole”; Barolsky, Infinite Jest; Frantz, Festum Voluptatis; Corbetta, Eros e botanica; Varriano, Tastes and Temptations, 118–40; and Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks.” 9 Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 123–24; and Turner, Eros Visible, 57.

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expression of gender reversal, typifying the upside-down realm of witchcraft.10 While this constitutes a sound perception, awaiting further elaboration in the ensuing discussion, it hardly exhausts the significance of this image given the inextricable roles (both theoretical and practical) played by sexuality in witchcraft. Witches were regarded as peerless experts in the comprehensive gamut of love magic, designed, among other things, to lure married men into adulterous liaisons and retain the straying hearts of faithless lovers. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century conceptualization of witchcraft as a heretical practice associated with diabolical worship brought about a corpus of literary and visual works that, by Parmigianino’s time, had evolved into a rich exhibit prompting speculation on sundry forms of bizarre and fantastical sexual behavior, including diabolical coitus, onanism, fornication, and orgies.11 This chapter argues that Parmigianino devised an image that operates on several levels of signification both emerging from and responding to contemporary discourses of witchcraft. The witty, playful manner of the viewing experience imparted by Parmigianino to a subject as sober as witchcraft perfectly accords with the rhetorical strategy of serio ludere (serious playfulness), an ancient approach adopted by Renaissance humanists and artists, in which a vulgar surface that entertains and startles the viewer conceals intellectual ideas the viewer must tease out for himself.12 The result is an image that satirizes witchcraft beliefs and refutes the veracity of witches during the first peak of witch persecutions and executions in the Italian peninsula.13 At the same time, the drawing lends itself to a perception 10 Zapperi, The Pregnant Man, 167–69; Turner, Libertines and Radicals, 33–36; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 123–24. Bette Talvacchia, under the entry “Pornography,” 769, claims that, in Witch Riding on a Phallus, Parmigianino “purposely used the motif in an obscene way, unable within the premises of 16th-century Italian culture to conjure a less sensational role for a detached penis, perhaps the most proscribed image it would be possible to flaunt in postpagan cultures.” This phallus is clearly more than a “detached penis,” however. 11 Giovanni da Capestrano (1386–1456): “They [i.e. witches] perpetrate many evil deeds, like fornication and rape, adultery, incest, sacrilege, sodomy and murder of children”; quoted in Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 160. This broad range of sexual behavior is surveyed in Masters, Eros and Evil. Scholars deem literary and visual works about witchcraft virtually pornographic: Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 82–83; Anglo, “Evident Authority,” 17; Couliano, Eros and Magic, 214; and Davidson, The Witch in Northern European Art, 101. For censuring the view of this material as pornographic, see Stephens, Demon Lovers, 32. 12 Wind, Pagan Mysteries, 222: “These serious games (serio ludere) consisted in finding within common experience an unusual object endowed with the kind of contradictory attributes which are difficult to imagine united in the deity.” See Wind, 236, on Renaissance adoption of this concept. Wind, 237, offers that “serio ludere” could have stand as a motto over his unwritten chapter on grottesche, which is similar to Orphic disguise: “the art of interweaving the divine secrets within the fabric of fables.” On artistic practice of the serio ludere, see DaCosta Kaufmann, Arcimboldo, 109. 13 See introduction.

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as an artistic exercise in fantasia (imagination) and ingegno (wit), providing a source of pleasure for the viewer. Witch Riding on a Phallus emerges as a test case for the witty and sophisticated dimension of grotesque erotica, beyond their bawdy, sensational surface, and for the crucial role played by the subject of witchcraft in shaping the interpretive experience.

Parmigianino, Picart, and Printmaking In the absence of Parmigianino’s original drawing and any data about the anonymous print, our knowledge about the circumstances of Witch Riding on a Phallus is relatively meager. Several quandaries regarding authorship and chronology must therefore be addressed prior to mounting an interpretation. Our point of departure is the year 1732, the only ascertainable date associated with the image. In that year, during his sojourn in Amsterdam, the French printmaker Bernard Picart (1673–1733) made seventy-eight reproductive prints, nearly all of them etchings: fifty-five after paintings and drawings by Italian and French artists, twelve after his own drawings, and eleven after Rembrandt. He assembled them in Impostures innocentes; ou Recueil d’estampes d’après divers peintres illustres (Innocent Impostures; or A Collection of Prints after Various Celebrated Painters), published posthumously by his wife in Amsterdam in 1734. Parmigianino, né Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (1503–40), is represented in the collection by two works: a sketchy Trois Femmes, and the more elaborate Une Sorcière allant au Sabat, translated in the catalogue’s 1756 English edition as A witch going to a nocturnal meeting (fig. 34). The attribution of the latter to Parmigianino, in addition to the inscription Fran Parm inv, is articulated in the lettering beneath the picture frame: “Gravé par B. Picart en 1732 d’après le dessin de François Mazzoli, dit le Parmesan, qui est au Cabinet de Mr. Rutgers a Amsterdam.” Secure as it is, this documentation poses additional questions: Did Picart produce an accurate copy of the drawing he saw in the collection of his friend Antonie Rutgers? Was the phallus in this drawing rendered with or without facial features and claws? And which of the two printed versions was executed first? The key for managing these quandaries lies in Picart’s motivations for publishing various reproductions gathered in a compilation. Its objective is proclaimed in the introductory essay to Impostures innocentes, titled “Discours sur les préjugés de certains curieux touchant la gravure” (translated in the English edition as “A discourse on the prejudices of certain critics in regard to engraving”). In the eighteenth century, it was assumed that praiseworthy prints were produced by painters—peintre-graveur, as Adam Bartsch called them—and not by professional engravers, since printmaking was an art that depended on dessin, a province

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belonging by rights to the class of painters. Apparently seeking to overthrow this assumption, Picart claimed in his Impostures that his copies would prove that the reproductive printmaker was as skillful as the peintre-graveur. To simulate the work of the painter-printer, he chose etching, a medium imitating the spontaneous and intimate effects of a drawing, rather than engraving, the domain of reproductive printmakers.14 (One of his models must have been Parmigianino, who, in the eighteenth century, was acclaimed as the first painter-etcher.15) Since in the eighteenth century fidelity to the original became a principal criterion for evaluating the reproductive print, Picart printed the original drawings in reverse, striving to conserve their style (particularly the features of outline and volume) in his etchings.16 Stressing the importance of complying with the criterion of fidelity, he censured Agostino Veneziano for embellishing his engravings after Raphael’s drawings Venus and Cupid and Bacchanal with elements absent from the originals (a landscape, a quiver) and for modifying some intrinsic features (hair, leaves, light and shade). In order to countervail these lamentable deficiencies, Picart exhibited two of his own “accurate” etchings after the same drawings by the Italian master.17 Meticulous in the specifics of his ambitious project, Picart declared that all but eight of the prints reproduced in the volume (including the two after Raphael) had never before been printed.18 Noticeably, Parmigianino’s two drawings are not among the eight exceptions. It must therefore be concluded that Picart’s Une Sorcière allant au Sabat was new to printing, and that his reproduction is faithful to the drawing he saw in Rutgers’s collection—a drawing in which the glans of the phallus is turned into a face, and its scrotum issues in a pair of stocky legs ending in clawed feet. The hypothesis that the anonymous version was etched only after Picart’s version finds support in nuanced differences obtaining between them. In the anonymous version, the sloppy and inconsistent hatching and crosshatching replacing the phallus’s clawed feet indicate a late, possibly hasty repair, achieved after the obliteration of these features. Moreover, this version presents some additional improvements: the crescent moon was refined by removing the crosshatching, and the inscription at the bottom left was written more legibly. Remarkably, a downward-facing male 14 Stein, “Introduction,” 7–9. See also Carlson, “The Painter-Etcher,” 25–27; and McAllister Johnson, The Rise and Fall of the Fine Art Print. 15 Marchesano, “The Impostures Innocentes,” 119–22. 16 Jensen Adams, “Reproduction and Authenticity,” 85, 91, 98. 17 Picart, Impostures innocentes; ou Recueil d’estampes, 6–8 for the “Discours,” and plates 2 and 4; and Picart, Impostures Innocentes; or A Collection of Prints, 4–5. For Agostino’s engravings, see Jensen Adams, “Reproduction and Authenticity,” 81–85. 18 Picart, Impostures innocentes; ou Recueil d’estampes, 9. In the English edition, two of the eight plates were erroneously written as one (plates 6 and 9 were written as plate 60); Picart, Impostures Innocentes; or A Collection of Prints, 6.

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profile has been etched at the bas-de-page of this version. Consistently cropped whenever the print is reproduced in the scholarly literature, this strange vignette provides a clue as to the timing of the print. From the late eighteenth century onwards, printmakers occasionally etched a small figure or object in the plate’s margins, outside the picture frame, in order to test the needles and the strength of the etching acid on the plate. Such remarque, as it was called, was usually burnished out before the print was made, but in some cases a few “remarque proofs” made before burnishing still survive.19 The terminus ante quem for the printing of the anonymous version is supplied by the collector’s penciled lettering on its back, “Richard Ford 1824.”20 This ordering of the prints’ execution, with Picart’s preceding the anonymous version, provides information which justifies the construction of two conceivable scenarios. In the first, Parmigianino sketched a faceless phallus. The drawing Picart accurately copied was tainted by a later hand who, in an attempt to mitigate the obscenity, morphed the phallus into a fantastic tubular monster by adding the strange zoomorphic features. In the second, the drawing copied by Picart was entirely Parmigianino’s; it was the later etcher who vulgarly stripped the subtle phallus of its animalic features (the tail is a vestige of its previous state). Be that as it may, one must suppose that Parmigianino would have wished the phallus he sketched to remain legible as a phallus. The attribution of Witch Riding on a Phallus to Parmigianino may raise an eyebrow among those who are familiar exclusively with his paintings. The design is no doubt unusual in his oeuvre—in no other work did he come close to attaining such grotesquery and peculiarity—but is not altogether alien from it either.21 Consider first the formal and compositional affinities. The knot of onlookers witnessing the scene accords with Parmigianino’s distinctive formula for grouping bystanders: as they squeeze into a narrow space, the forward-tilted heads form a downward diagonal leading the eye to the focal point (fig. 35). The grouping additionally mingles rapt beholders, whose billowing hair testifies to their thrill, and others who in their awe turn to their neighbors in a compacted, head-to-head collocation (figs. 35 and 36). The witch is kindred to Parmigianino’s known figural types. Her bulbous nose, protruding lower lip, and flaccid chin are physiognomic features characterizing his elderly figures, one of whom is a woman diligently spinning

19 Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 152. 20 In addition, the initials RF are handwritten at the bottom front. For Ford’s collection, see Twelve Etchings. Glue marks on the backside denote its previous location in a print album. The cut figures by the edges indicate an originally slightly larger design. 21 Popham listed the modified one in the “Miscellaneous” thematic category with the comment “probably reproduces a genuine drawing.” Popham, Catalogue, cat. O.R. 100, pl. 464.

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Figure 35. Jacopo Caraglio, after Parmigianino, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1526, engraving, 20.9 × 24 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

upon a distaff (fig. 3).22 The spinner bears a further resemblance to the witch in being downcast and modestly clad in a plain dress with broad sleeves and a bulging fold across the midriff in the back as well as a coarse, bunched head-covering. A particularly unusual motif recurring in his works is the rampant pose of the hybrid animal behind the witch. Assuming this stance, a dog molests a youth, lions attack a warrior, and a sheep is held by a shepherd the better to adore the infant Christ (fig. 35).23 Thematically, Witch Riding on a Phallus finds its place with ease in Parmigianino’s extensive corpus of erotic and sexual works on paper.24 The dating of his erotica, 22 See also Popham, Catalogue, cat. 584, pl. 422. 23 Popham, Catalogue, cat. 6r, pl. 306; cat. 460, pl. 437; cat. 631, pl. 144; cat. 726r, pl. 177; cat. O.R. 123, pl. 467; cat. 623, pl. 400; cat. 256, pl. 429; cat. O.R. 72, pl. 298; and Béguin, Di Giampaolo, and Vaccaro, Parmigianino, cat. 37, 130. 24 Thomas, “Eroticism in the Art of Parmigianino”; Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 89–117; and Turner, Eros Visible, 84–85, 174–91, 284–85, 292–94, 296–97, 311–12, 357–58.

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Figure 36. Parmigianino, Entombment of Christ, etching, 31.4 × 23.9 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

attested mostly on stylistic grounds, roughly falls between 1525 and his death in 1540. From the Modi series of sixteen coital positions Marcantonio Raimondi engraved in 1524 after Giulio Romano’s drawings, Parmigianino twice copied the sexual intercourse of a woman perched atop a man’s lap (fig. 37), a position

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Figure 37. Parmigianino, after Marcantonio Raimondi’s Modi, Two Lovers, pen and brown ink, 13.1 × 15.2 cm. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.

that he perverts in Witch Riding on a Phallus.25 From the series Gli amori degli dei (The Loves of the Gods) engraved by Jacopo Caraglio after drawings by Rosso Fiorentino and Perino del Vaga, he sketched mythical couples for printmaking and as presentation drawings.26 However, one of his few etchings—showing a man clasping a woman in an amorous embrace, who, in response, reposes a suggestive hand on his crotch—boldly propagates an erotic dalliance that defies a recognizable narrative (fig. 38).27 Evidence of Parmigianino’s fixation on the membrum virile comes from numerous drawings. In one drawing, a man is equipped with not one but two penises, and men sporting erections appear elsewhere.28 Genitals 25 Popham, Catalogue, cat. 28, pl. 416; and Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 110, fig. 106. 26 Popham, Catalogue, cat. 257, pl. 366; cat. 245, 387, 510, 654, 655, 718v, pls. 395–96; O.C. 20, pl. 397; 393, pl. 272. Eroticism and sorcery converge in Parmigianino’s pair of tondi drawings of the sorceress Circella from Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (1486); Hattendorf, “Omnia vincit amor.” 27 Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 224–26, figs. 247–48. 28 Popham, Catalogue, cat. 409, pl. 448; cat. 546, pl. 368.

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Figure 38. Parmigianino, Lovers, etching and engraving, 14.7 × 10.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 39. Parmigianino, The Lower Part of Two Male Nudes, 1535–40, pen and brown ink, 19 × 8.9 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo © RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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conspicuous for their unusual size and state often provoked suppression, as was the fate of Witch Riding on a Phallus. In the two drawings devoted to Priapus and Lotis, the sex member of the ithyphallic god has been expurgated,29 and in a sketch of two headless male nudes, a man with a partly obliterated penis masturbates his companion’s stiff member (fig. 39).30 Another feature of his erotic works germane to Witch Riding on a Phallus is the use of humorous double entendres. A drawing depicts two naked nymphs together with a well-endowed satyr clutching his own tail. Since coda, Italian for “tail,” is also a euphemism for a penis, his gesture can be understood as autoerotic.31 In the much-discussed painting of Cupid Carving His Bow (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) the acts of stretching and curving the bow are metaphors for sexual intercourse.32 In view of this broad spectrum of sexual works, from delicate erotica to graphic obscenities, bestowing special attention on male genitals and sexual diversities, Witch Riding on a Phallus appears far from anomalous within Parmigianino’s oeuvre as a whole. Considering the different functions served by drawings for Parmigianino as an artist—as preparatory studies, private sketches, and exclusive gifts—one wonders for what purpose Witch Riding on a Phallus was intended. The highly finished condition, the original subject, the audacious approach, and the skillful staging of multilayered meanings lend the impression that Parmigianino intended this drawing to be viewed—confidentially, given its egregious indecency—by a select circle of erudite acquaintances. Plausibly, he may have further intended the design to be printed and disseminated through a limited print run.

Tropes of Witchcraft Just as Picart accurately identified the subject matter of the other works reproduced in Impostures innocentes, so was he correct in identifying Parmigianino’s protagonist as a witch. The prevalent concept of witchcraft to which educated Europeans subscribed in the early sixteenth century reverberates in Witch Riding on a Phallus in particular ways. Witches were typically denounced on the basis of two cardinal forms of misconduct: practicing maleficia and striking a pact with the Devil. The destructive magical power of Parmigianino’s witch is, as we shall presently see, only subtly implied, whereas her demonic alliance is clearly asseverated through the presence of a readily identifiable devil. Among the ancillary ideas that underpinned 29 Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 115; and Thompson, “A Fallacy Exposed,” 186–89. 30 Popham, Catalogue, cat. 496, pl. 409. 31 Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 115, fig. 117; Turner, Eros Visible, 293, 373–74. 32 Simons, The Sex of Men, 261.

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the construal of witchcraft as a form of devil worship, the most widespread was the idea of a nocturnal journey to attend the sabbath. The scene Parmigianino depicts lingers on the moments before the witch’s departure: bystanders gather to watch her mount her fantastic phallic vehicle. The crescent moon strategically placed above her head refers to the long-established belief in the goddess Diana as the patroness of witches (likewise, in his Rocca Sanvitale fresco in Fontanellato, Parmigianino placed a crescent moon in the sky above Diana, substituting her conventional crescent diadem).33 The two owls, deemed ill-omened birds since antiquity, allude, as discussed in the previous chapter, to the purported Latin and Italian derivations for a witch, strix and strega, respectively. The animal jawbone and human skull scattered in the foreground—as in Baldung’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath (fig. 28)—register the violence and cruelty imputed to witchcraft. Parmigianino negotiated the common lore surrounding witches in terms of their external appearance, demeanor, and psychology, but his inventive approach to the witch figure demands explanation. While her portrayal as an aged woman affirms the ubiquitous prejudice that elderly women are more inclined toward witchcraft, it is less obvious how her fully attired appearance and inert, lackadaisical disposition are compatible with the presumption that witches must be febrile and concupiscent, evinced here by her phallic ride. In the early sixteenth century, rendering the witch naked to highlight her carnal lustfulness and gender transgression was a vital component in her evolving stereotype, as evident from the prints of Dürer and Baldung (figs. 5 and 28) and the Stregozzo (fig. 17).34 But this tendency was by no means unanimously accepted, as images of appareled witches still existed (figs. 42 and 45).35 Given that clothes served, in life as in art, to invest a person with a social identity,36 in clothing his witch, Parmigianino introduced her as an individual, one who—given her shabby, loose-sleeved tunic of coarse fabric—hails from the lower rungs of society.37 Similarly, her gender transgression 33 The belief about witches going to a nocturnal journey with Diana has its origins in the tenth-century Canon Episcopi; Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 62. This belief was reiterated in the sixteenth century; see, for example, Pico della Mirandola, Libro detto strega, 100–102. 34 On witches’ nakedness in these prints, see Hults, The Witch as Muse, 68–71. 35 For further illustrations of dressed witches, such as those in Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus (Cologne, ca. 1489), see Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, chaps. 1–3. A clothed witch features in Rosso Fiorentino’s drawing (ca. 1530); Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 280–81. On garbed and naked witches, see Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” 353–54. 36 Burke, The Italian Renaissance Nude, 34. 37 On the witches’ social status, see Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 157–60. Her attire is comparable to that of orphans and housemaids in Vecellio, Degli habiti antichi et moderni, 148–50. Witches confessed that they went completely dressed to the sabbath. One Modenese witch confessed in her 1539 trial that she went to the sabbath “around sunset, before going to sleep, together with other witches, all dressed as they had been during the day”; Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 121–22.

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is marked by her down-curving high boots of battered leather, evidently belonging to a male, and donned outdoors. Her libidinousness, bluntly evinced in her riding a phallus, is expressed by the exposure of a chunky thigh and partial calf below her hitched-up skirt—a portion of naked flesh tantalizingly brushing against the penile shaft. Nevertheless, in depicting his witch as an individual, Parmigianino did not intend to signal the reality of her phallic ride. On the contrary, the display of a fully clothed figure yields an immediate and stark incongruity between the witch and the phallus. As a gender construct, the clamorous disparity between the concealed female body muffled in her rippling clothing and the egregiously brandished and gargantuan virile member underscores early modern humoral theories drawn on Aristotle and Galen: the male element was hot and dry, hence active and energetic, while the female complement was cold and moist, and consequently weak and passive.38 The licentious character of the witch’s riding a very prodigy of a phallus is belied not only by the poverty and modesty of her appearance, but also by her stern, almost apathetic demeanor which heightens this incongruity. As I go on to argue below, her demeanor is best understood as the result of a delusionary mental condition. The sexual and magic activities that, according to my analysis, adhere to this otherwise insipid figure ought therefore to be taken as a reinforcement of the satirical and skeptical cast of the image.

Genital Joke The phallus imparts to this otherwise gloomy scene a decidedly comic coloration. To begin with, it embodies antithesis and crosses categories, being at once a body part and an independent creature, human and bestial, mighty and severed. Capable in equal measure of eliciting laughter, the phallus is not shown in isolation, abstracted from a spatial or temporal context, in the manner of freestanding phalluses depicted in wall graffiti and book scribbles. Rather, it is embedded in a pseudo-narrative whereby characters mount, touch, and observe it.39 While a phallus as such—hyperbolized and “lead[ing] an independent life”—demonstrates the “grotesque body” that Mikhail Bakhtin associated with the carnivalesque culture, 40 Witch Riding on a Phallus hardly endorses his thesis that the “culture of laughter” exists at the “popular” level alone. Quite the contrary: Parmigianino crafted the drawing for the delectation of an erudite audience, as evident in his 38 Simons, The Sex of Men, 127. 39 For phalluses isolated from or deployed in an illusionistic space in Italian imagery, see Nova, “Erotismo e spiritualità”; Rea, “Graffiti e targhe proprietarie”; Guerzoni, “The Erotic Fantasies”; Bayer, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, 214–19; Colantuono, “The Penis Possessed”; and Turner, Eros Visible, 55–61. 40 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 317.

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focus on the diabolical character of witchcraft, a conception that circulated mostly among the elite, and in the cerebral wit in which he steeped the scene, awaiting to be deciphered and applauded. On the most immediate of interpretative levels, the phallus draws attention to the numerous motifs of a potentially sexual character and double entendres that pervade the scene. The witch’s riding on a phallus declares sexual intercourse. The tail (coda) appended to the phallus is, as remarked above, synonymous in demotic usage with “penis” and invokes the double entendres of a horse (cavallo), a stallion (stallone), an animal (animale), and, in the version with the clawed phallus, a bird (uccello): all of which propose the virile member. 41 A second tail, belonging to the ministering devil, stirs up further nuances of the colloquial euphemism in the way that it snakes between a pair of widespread legs, giving a feline flick with its tip. The naked devil in his supporting role encircles the penile shaft roundabout his arms in an allusion to sexual penetration, gently caressing the glans and hoisting it erect. 42 The distaff (rocca), spindle ( fuso), and horn (corno) were familiar genital symbols. 43 The owl (gufo, assiuolo, or civetta) is one of numerous bird species used as a slang term for the penis. 44 And in another pun, a group of witnesses, testes in Latin, keeps watch from nearby the testes. 45 The presence of the phallus ensures that the whole blossoming range of allusions to penile morphology, action, and terminology would not escape the viewer. A still more sophisticated site of condensed meanings is the phallus itself. The subject of witchcraft endows the phallus with a large measure of interpretive latitude. The constituents of the witchcraft realm that lend mutability and confusion to the image—phantasmal visions, transformed beings, enigmatic processes, and so forth—become especially acute when a motif as ambivalent and protean as the phallus takes center stage. Devoid of a stable meaning, a phallus depicted as at once independent, disproportionate, and bestial could have been variously perceived as a fantastic creature, a visual allusion, or a rhetorical device, be it a personification, a symbol, a synecdoche, or a hyperbole. The interpretive spectrum of Parmigianino’s phallus inevitably calls to mind Lacanian terminology. In “La signification du phallus” (1958) Jacques Lacan defined three kinds of phallus: the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real (the last of which betrays his failure to distinguish the phallus-as-signifier from the penis-as-organ).46 The phallus in Parmigianino’s image likewise brims with significations that oscillate 41 Simons, The Sex of Men, 81–83, 110–11. On birds, see also Toscan, Le carnaval du langage, vol. 3, chap. 42. 42 Simons, The Sex of Men, 254–62, explores sexual metaphors related to morphology and action. 43 Toscan, Le carnaval du langage, 4:1293–95 ( filare, fuso, and rocca); and Simons, The Sex of Men, 260–61. 44 Toscan, Le carnaval du langage, 4:1664, 1680, 1705; and Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks,” 105–6, 126. 45 Simons, The Sex of Men, 105–7. 46 Lacan, “The Meaning of the Phallus.”

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between the literal and the figurative, the real and the fantastic. Although I use it for the sake of clarity, the “phallus,” a term which dominates modern cultural and psychoanalytic discourses, is a problematic concept. What is more, sixteenth-century Italians rarely used the word phallo, preferring instead pene, priapus, membro virile, and the vulgar cazzo. Still, I find “phallus” apt in the present discussion, not only to set Parmigianino’s image apart from the anatomical penis, but also to stress its profusion of multivalent significations. 47 In what follows, I explore four potential readings of Witch Riding on a Phallus. The first reading shows how Parmigianino adopted the strategy of inversion to conceptualize the disorderly domain of witchcraft. The inverse ride, whereby the phallus is construed as a synecdoche of the male body, and the spinning implements are explored as expressions of the witch’s domination over men. The second reading elaborates the reversal of gender roles by incorporating the elements of the cuckolded bystander and the phallus perceived as a severed penis. The subsequent third and fourth readings subvert the power of witches and their very existence. Broaching the vexed ground of the veracity of the occult, the third reading explains the phallus as an illusion by adverting to perennial theories involving demonic deception and the psyche of witches. In the fourth reading, however, the phallus regains the ascendancy by assuming its ancient role as an amulet against the Evil Eye, incarnated here by the witch. Although we can never be certain that Parmigianino was cognizant of, much less deliberatively deploying, the panoply of interpretive possibilities I unfold here, the deliberate ambiguity built into the image strongly suggests that he wished, at the very least, to frustrate, deepen, and deflect the beholder’s effort to arrive at a single meaning. Fantastic and unmoored from any fixed narrative, Witch Riding on a Phallus invites an associative and fragmentary mode of viewing, in which not all components coalesce into a seamless recounting. The phallus instigates overlapping and contradictory readings that enhance the satirical spirit of the image and ground the viewer in relation to the ever changeable and incomprehensible terrain of witchcraft, as he or she both experiences it and wrestles with its contents. 48

Emasculated Muscle As we saw in the previous chapters, the realm of witchcraft, being unruly, chaotic, heretical, and dominated by the Devil, was imagined as the inverse of the ordinary world. Dürer graphically reproduced the upside-down world of witchcraft in Witch 47 On the history, development, and usage of the term “phallus,” see Simons, The Sex of Men, 52–59, 122. 48 On spectatorship in respect to witchcraft imagery, see Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 317–62.

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Riding on a Goat (fig. 5) through a constellation of inversionary signs: a witch’s domination of men symbolized by her riding on a billy goat while gripping its phallic horn, her position riding back-to-front, her hair streaming in the direction of travel rather than away from it, the putto’s somersaulting and rear view, and the shrewdly reversed monogram. Parmigianino’s tableau enters into a subtle dialogue with Dürer’s engraving. Of vertical format, both works center on a single old witch in profile, distaff in hand, riding on a creature evidently male. Parmigianino, however, has turned Dürer’s lively, daylight scene with its low horizon and playful putti into a gloomy, nocturnal assignation that takes place in a congested space marked by a high horizon. Further, he has substituted Dürer’s naked witch—flying vertiginously through the air—with a clothed witch who remains grounded, subdued, and immobile. It is tempting to imagine Parmigianino consciously planning his drawing as a printed foil to Dürer’s engraving with a possible eye to its reproduction in the innovative medium of etching. This would have brought him into explicit competition with the most eminent engraver of the time. 49 Be that as it may, Parmigianino extended the fundamental concept of inversion visualized in both images by re-creating Dürer’s engraving in reverse. The inversion that commands Witch Riding on a Phallus is gender role reversal writ large. Parmigianino’s choice to convey this reversal through the riding motif is sensible insofar as it adheres both to the widely held belief that witches’ jaunts en route to the sabbath involved riding on animals or elongated utensils and to the long-established paradigm of gender reversal exemplified by Phyllis’s ride on the back of Aristotle. His inspiration for the witch’s inverse ride derived from Dürer’s engraving and the Stregozzo (fig. 17). In the latter, the figure of the sprawling man on all fours embodies the concept of inversion in his reversed body, flagrantly exposed buttocks, and positioning below (and thus in the sway of) a naked old witch, who triumphantly presides over the procession from her perch atop a stupendous animal skeleton. Parmigianino’s placement of the witch on a phallus heightens the carnal aspect of this inversion. The notion of witches’ riding on poles smeared with a magical flight-facilitating unguent acquired a lewd dimension in the work of early sixteenth-century Northern artists such as Dürer, Baldung, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Urs Graf. Their witches suggestively place a variety of rods between their legs and guide them towards their pudenda, revealing their onanistic ulterior motive, the attaining of a sexual pleasure immorally gained in the absence of a man.50 As Joseph Koerner posits, “witches create, manipulate, and enchant phallic objects for their own carnal pleasures 49 For Parmigianino’s inspiration from Dürer, see Brown, “A Print Source for Parmigianino”; Emison, “Invention and the Italian Renaissance Print,” 200–201; and Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 25–26. 50 Weigert, “Autonomy as Deviance.”

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and malevolent plots. Sausage and wand are therefore not the artist’s symbols of the penis, but the witch’s.” Accordingly, the sausages suspended on the handle of a pitchfork in Baldung’s woodcut (fig. 28) “may be a severed penis, a castration fantasy, or just a sausage.”51 In working out this sexual innuendo and comically enlisting the huge phallus in the role of an extemporized dildo, Parmigianino aimed to ridicule the witch’s promiscuity and exaggerated sexual urges. Conversely, when the phallus is perceived as a personification or a synecdoche for the male body as whole, it serves as a proxy for the submissive man.52 (Given that remarques were often related thematically to the main image, could it be that the male head sketched horizontally beneath the glans, the correlate “head” of the penile entity, in the plate’s margins, spells out the role of the phallus as a synecdoche for the male body?) In this case, the witch’s ride signals an inverse gender hierarchy and—more consonant with the sexual riding—the form of intercourse in which the woman goes on top. Since antiquity, the consecrated metaphor for an inverse copulation was the “horse ride,” a sexual metaphor that classical authors expanded by the usage of equestrian vocabulary.53 Giulio Romano visualized this metaphor in one of the Modi positions, where the woman’s “riding” on a man takes place in a wagon pulled by Cupid assuming the role of a steed (fig. 40).54 Parmigianino dramatized the equine metaphor with a touch of humorous raillery by likening the inert and slumped-over witch to an equestrienne through a number of analogies: the conventional profile view showing the straddling of the mount, the distaff resolutely gripped in the crutch of her arm, akin to the chivalric flourishing of a lance during a joust, the clutch of the restraining reins, the accompanying demonic groom, and, of course, the “stallion” itself. The inverse copulation implicitly pinned upon the witch points to her sinful venery and constitution of a destabilizing threat to the social order. Church authorities, wishing to maintain the patriarchal order, promoted the idea that the inverted coitus forestalled procreation and consequently 51 Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 335. On the equation of witches’ distaffs, spindles, brooms, and magic wands to male genitals, see Delfino and Schmuckher, Stregoneria, magia, credenze e superstizioni, 60–61; Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, 332–33; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 126, 128; Stewart, “Distaffs and Spindles,” 130–32; and Brinkmann, Hexenlust und Sündenfall. 52 For these roles of the phallus in the Italian Renaissance, see Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr, 109–17; and Simons, The Sex of Men, 85. 53 On the ancient equation of riding on a phallus to an equestrian, see Csapo, “Riding the Phallus for Dionysus,” 282–83. The usage of equestrian vocabulary within a sexual metaphor goes back to Horace, who describes the witch Canidia addressing the author with the erotic domination of her riding atop his shoulders, “a knight atop [her] foe” (Epodes 17.74); Paule, Canidia, 123. On the “horse ride” position, see also Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 165–66; Zapperi, The Pregnant Man, 161–65; and Desmond, Ovid’s Art, 19. 54 Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 121–22. Turner, Eros Visible, 367–73, points to the resemblance of Cupid in this Modi scene to that in Parmigianino’s Cupid Carving His Bow.

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Figure 40. Anonymous artist, after an engraving of Marcantonio Raimondi’s Position 14 from I modi (drawn by Giulio Romano), 1550s, woodcut, in “Toscanini volume,” f. B4v, image size: 6 × 6.5 cm. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.

outlawed the practice as unnatural and illicit.55 Moreover, the inverse copulation adverts to the deep-rooted affinity of witches and prostitutes, whose mutual traits of immorality, concupiscence, and refusal of marriage propelled their association in Renaissance Italy by authors, poets, emblematists, and inquisitors.56 Just as 55 For example, the Archbishop of Florence Saint Antoninus, in the chapter “Conjugal Act” of his De matrimonio (1474), condemns a man who allows the woman to be on top of him as a sinner. On the apprehension towards the woman-on-top position in Renaissance Italy, see Tentler, Sin and Confession, 189–90; Hart and Stevenson, Heaven and the Flesh, 31; Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 101–24; and, most thoroughly, Den Hartog, “Women on Top.” 56 For the witch as a prostitute in Inquisitorial records: Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 24–56, 90–94; in satirical literature: Aretino, “La Cortigiana,” 1:141 (2.6); Aretino, Sei giornate, 293; the pseudo-Aretino dialogue Ragionamento del Zoppino, in Salkeld, “History, Genre and Sexuality,” 93–94; in poems: Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 66–80; and in ancient literature: Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 178–81, 247–49, 302. On

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Figure 41. German School, Melancholy, woodcut, in the German Almanac, Augsburg, 1484. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

prostitutes were accused of practicing erotic magic, so were witches assumed to practice aberrant coital behavior, otherwise the exclusive province of prostitution. The polarizations embodied in the witch and the phallus—whole/fragmentary, placed/displaced, superior/inferior—converge in a second semiotic system of gender inversion, one devised from combining the implements of spinning: the distaff gripped by the witch in the crook of her arm and the singular motif of the pair of spindles peculiarly affixed to the bald head of a male bystander looming behind. What do they signify? witches as prostitutes, see Weigert, “Autonomy as Deviance”; Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition, 235; Zapperi, The Pregnant Man, 165–67; Bullough, “Postscript,” 206; and Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 269–70. On Circe as a prostitute, see chapter 4.

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Some of the observations made in chapter 1 about Vico’s reversed print of Parmigianino’s Old Woman with a Distaff are applicable here. Early modern representations of women engaged in spinning often served to model forth the image of a virtuous woman valued for her domesticity and diligence. It therefore comes as little surprise that, in the hands of Parmigianino’s transgressive witch, the distaff accentuates her unproductiveness and misconduct: it is run through by a spindle and bears a full hank of yarn. To accentuate her futility as a worker, Parmigianino distorts a basic element of the practice. Most spinners were right-handed, and thus fixed the distaff in the crook of the left arm and twirled the spindle with the right hand.57 Abiding by this principle in his other drawings, including Old Woman with a Distaff (fig. 3),58 Parmigianino forgoes it here by planting the distaff under the witch’s right arm. This cannot be a coincidence: Dürer’s witch, too, holds the distaff in her right hand, a detail that, in an image where relative directionality is of paramount significance, must be perceived as another signal of inversion. One could argue that the left-right reversal is irrelevant in the present setting, given that reproductive prints often accidentally introduced left-handers by way of the inadvertence of copyists, who did not always take pains to make an intermediary drawing that would preserve the orientation of the original. But if Parmigianino drew the scene with a print in mind, he might well have foreseen its inversion, just as Dürer did and just as he himself did in his other designs intended for printmaking. Picturing the sinistral witch with a distaff shorn of its necessary workaday instrumentality signifies her disobedient and sinister nature. The idle distaff, a standard attribute of the slattern (fig. 41), identifies the witch as a disobedient wife, resisting ecclesiastic and patriarchal efforts to circumscribe women’s social and economic roles to household drudgery.59 The distaff identifies her as a mutinous consort with an added force, given that she has apparently converted the distaff’s unthreatening “female” function into a latently violent “male” weapon. In its shape and positioning, it alludes to a lance and thereby marks her as a wayward female who usurps the quintessentially chivalric male role of jousting knight. Conversely, the pair of spindles cincturing the temples of a male bystander, which stick out in the manner of bestial horns, signal his want of virility by invoking the insults of becco (he-goat) and cornuto (horned animal), that is, “cuckold.” In fact, as Louise Rice has observed, his spindles literalize a contemporary proverb about cuckolding, cited in Giovanni Battista Modio’s Il convito, a satirical conversation on the genus of cuckoldry published in 57 For this rule and its violation, see Posner, “An Aspect of Watteau,” 282. 58 See also Popham, Catalogue, cat. 764v, pl. 40. 59 For the unused distaff as an attribute of lethargic women, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 300–302. On witches as bad housewives who failed in their domestic vocations, see Brauner, Fearless Wives, 71–110; and Purkiss, The Witch in History, 91–94.

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Rome in 1554: “Someone whose wife is giving him, as the saying goes, ‘the twisted spindles’ [le fusa torte] is only called ‘cuckold.’”60 The potent horns of the adjacent devil and hybrid animal heighten the effect of the bystander’s derisory simulacra. In bestowing feminizing spindles upon the man and a martial distaff on the woman, Parmigianino structured a reversal that finds its genesis, much like the witch’s inverse ride, in the topos of the “Power of Women,” specifically in the myth of Omphale, who appropriates Hercules’s club and lion skin in exchange for woman’s clothing and spinning paraphernalia. Parmigianino lent a satirical adaptation to this moralizing iconography insofar as he conflated these established tropes of gender inversion—Phyllis’s riding of Aristotle and Omphale’s exchange of gendered objects with Hercules—into a novel structure of opposition.61

Dismembered Member Unlike Dürer’s witch whose grip of the goat’s horn clearly marks her culpability in cuckoldry,62 Parmigianino left the cuckolding for the viewer to piece together. This process should be considered not only on a figurative level but also in its “realistic” representational dimension. Thus, the internal group of bystanders furnishes the social environment that the premise of cuckoldry realistically requires. Their presence is particularly effective for providing the scene with a spatial and temporal context, turning its visual rhetoric from “knowing,” as in Dürer’s iconic image, into “telling.”63 The growth of the witchcraft phenomenon depended, in many respects, on oral transmissions. Gossip and rumors, through which witchcraft incidents were disseminated, occasionally evolved into accusations reported to the Inquisition.64 Given the preposterous spectacle before them, bystanders, who would rush headlong to report the illicit occurrence, are here being subtly lampooned. Their presence nevertheless encourages narration. How might the viewer, through the eyes of the bystanders, relate the scene? The connection we see forged between the witch and the male bystander who is crowned with the spinner’s tools provides an important perch for venturing a 60 Rice, “The Cuckoldries of Baccio del Bianco,” 228–31. On cuckoldry, see also Stewart, Unequal Couples, 71–73; Blok, “Rams and Billy-Goats”; and Jones, The Secret Middle Ages, 68–71. 61 On Italian Renaissance imagery of the Power of Women, see Jacobson-Schutte, “Trionfo delle donne”; Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto, 73–81; and Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 265–78. 62 Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 29. 63 White, “The Value of Narrativity,” 1–2. 64 Stewart and Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors, and Gossip. The social processes of rumors and gossip are echoed in Robin Briggs’s book title, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft.

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narrative. The distaff, brimful with the possibility of violence, associates the witch with subversive wives in contemporary prints and drawings who, in an overthrow of the household hierarchy, employ the distaff as an improvised instrument for the castigation of husbands.65 To all intents and purposes, the witch had already plied her distaff, figuratively wounding the cuckolded bystander and stigmatizing his injured body with her spindles. If that is so, the bystander’s cuckoldry denotes two conceivable scenarios. In the narrow sense of conjugal infidelity, the image suggests that the witch, an insatiable wife bent on extramarital lechery, cuckolds her husband by orgiastically fornicating with the hybrid who backs her upon the phallic ride, the devil in the lead, and the phallus itself. This scenario echoes testimonies recorded in witchcraft treatises about the doings of incubi, devils assuming the form of men, who visited women at night and copulated with them in front of their helpless husbands.66 Taken in the broader sense of emasculation, the reconstructed cuckolding evinces the power of witches to visit impotence upon men, thrash to pieces their masculine honor, and sabotage the marital hierarchy, as insinuated by the cuckold’s proximity to the mother and infant on whom he gazes dotingly, and who returns his gaze with a reciprocated affection.67 Such narratives were not uncommon. One of the sermons by Strasbourg Cathedral preacher Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg compiled in Die Emeis (The Ants) of 1516 describes how witches affected by the Devil imagine engaging in flight and performing sabbath rites. In the woodcut illustrating this sermon (fig. 42), the clothed woman astride a bench is identified in the correlate sermon as a hallucinating woman who, seeking to demonstrate her credentials as a witch, has undertaken the requisite preparations for aerial travel, including anointing herself in magical unguent, yet has ended up falling off the bench. As Charles Zika compellingly argues, her exposed thighs (as Parmigianino’s witch) intimate that she experiences her ride sexually.68 Linda Hults noted that, in a variation on the “battle for the pants” iconography, this witch triumphantly flaunts a codpiece she has ostensibly stripped away from the naked male who is clinging to a tree hoping to reclaim it. The attitude of the man leaning on a crutch up a tree suggests mental and physical enervation, presumably 65 Meijer, “Esempi del comico figurativo,” 261, fig. 1; Even, “Andrea del Castagno’s Eve”; Emison, Low and High Style, fig. 21; and Stewart, “Distaffs and Spindles.” In the engraving Wild Couple Jousting by the German printer Master ES (ca. 1450–67), the Wild Woman is armed with a distaff to fight the Wild Man; see Husband, The Wild Man, 139–41. The witch with her potentially violent distaff invokes Atropos, the older Fate who unpredictably cut the thread of life: Dumont, “Francesco Salviati,” 170; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 121–24; Schade, Schadenzauber, 112–18; and Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” 363–64. 66 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 313–14 (2.1.4). 67 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 88–89; and Stephens, Demon Lovers, 312–21. 68 On the print, see Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 70–75.

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Figure 42. Three Female Witches on a Night Ride, woodcut, in Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg, Die Emeis, Strasbourg, 1517, 37v. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

the effect of castration.69 Though any direct influence of the book illustration seems unlikely, Witch Riding on a Phallus appears to incorporate a similar narrative, as Parmigianino’s cuckold, too, realizes that the witch has despoiled him of his masculinity. Yet instead of a crutch, his emasculation is marked by spindles, and instead of his codpiece, the witch has seized his phallus, a symbol for his genitals or potency. In this narrative frame, the phallus, by reason of its prodigious proportions and animalistic features, satirizes a dismembered penis. Patricia Simons contends that while Lacan tried to dissociate the phallus from the penis, visual representations of the freestanding phallus maintain the inseparability of the two, thereby making castration “a necessary act of language and imagery under patriarchy.”70 Various types of sources—demonological treatises, fictional literature, judicial records, and magicians’ manuals—assert the power of witches and devils to obviate sexual desire and sexual performance by inflicting both virtual and literal castration: thwarting erection, preventing the emission of semen, forcing the husband and wife apart, and—most pertinent here—inflicting impotence and even divesting 69 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 84–85. This figure is identified as a castrated Saturn by Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 217–18. Sullivan, “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien,” 376, proposes that this man refers to Priapus in Horace’s Satires. 70 Simons, The Sex of Men, 71.

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males of their virile member.71 Italian witches who engaged in love magic designed to aid or impede sexual copulation often employed items that refer to the phallus directly or metaphorically, such as eels, candles, birds, and wax figurines with genitals.72 Witch Riding on a Phallus invokes such magical operations. The distaff and spindles, in themselves phallic metaphors, serve as cuckoldry devices as much as they assist the witch in her imitative magic to rob men of their virility. The reins clutched by the witch in her attempt to restrain the phallus recall ligature, a binding magic involving the tying of knots in objects commonly used for amorous purposes, often with the intention to inflict impotence.73 Analogous in both content and tone to Witch Riding on a Phallus is the account of magical castration in Heinrich Kramer’s influential Malleus maleficarum of 1486.74 The chapter “The Way in Which They Take Away Male Members” makes clear that the removal of genitals is no more than a figment. First, devils work to impair the victim’s external senses of sight and touch by affecting his inner senses of memory and imagination. As soon as this is achieved, the witch conceals his penis with an illusory “glamour” so that upon touching his body he feels only flatness, while bystanders, for their part, see mutilation.75 Kramer endorses the veracity of this deceptive castration by supplying some titillating reports. Witches, we learn, “sometimes keep large numbers of these members (twenty or thirty at once) in a bird’s nest or in some cabinet, where the members move as if alive or eat a stalk or fodder, as many have seen and the general report relates.” Nothing is considered more persuasive than the specific hearsay: A certain man reported that when he had lost his member and gone to a certain sorceress to regain his well-being, she told the sick man that he should climb a certain tree and granted that he could take whichever one he wanted from the nest, in which there were very many members. When he tried to take a particular large one, the sorceress said: “You shouldn’t take that one,” adding that it belonged to one of the parish priests.76 71 For impotence magic in Italy, see Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition, 103, 107, 126–27; Canosa, Sessualità e Inquisizione, 43, 45, 47; Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 117–25; and Duni, “Impotence, Witchcraft and Politics.” On fifteenth-century belief in impotence magic, see Rider, Magic and Impotence, 186–207. 72 Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 57, 71, 117–25. 73 Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 23–24. 74 Jacobus Sprenger is credited as a co-writer but most likely had a minor contribution; see Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 18–19; and Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 54–55. Thirteen reprints of the Malleus (all in Latin) were subsequently published by 1520. On the considerable impact of this treatise on the writings of Italian demonologists, see Baroja, The World of the Witches, 104–8; and Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic,” 33, 50n. 4. 75 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 323–30 (2.1.7). 76 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 328 (2.1.7).

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Witch Riding on a Phallus shares some elements with the Malleus passage: severed male genitals appearing, moving, and behaving like animals; displaced genitals possessed by a witch who is in cahoots with the devil; and the participation of the afflicted victim and bystanders. Further grounds for comparison are provided by the double entendres and the sheer size of Parmigianino’s depicted penis. Kramer’s mention of nest-dwelling avian penises brings into play the familiar euphemism capable of subsuming both sexes (the nest for the female genitalia and the bird for the male), and his ribald gibe about the well-endowed priest draws on anticlerical jokes invoking the relentless sexual appetite of prelates.77 Citing these parallels is not meant to suggest that Parmigianino had read the Malleus, but rather to show that the incongruous components in Witch Riding on a Phallus do not preclude narration of some sort. Stories about witches dispossessing men of their virile member were concocted from a variety of ludicrous elements, whether aimed at validating or refuting the existence of this magic. Finally, the affinity between text and image extends to the issue of illusion. Just as Kramer explained in his book the mechanism of an illusory castration that deceives both victim and bystanders, so did Parmigianino convey the absurdity of this magic in his image. Using a comedic rhetoric was but one method; another, as we go on to see below, was alluding to theories promoted by skeptics of witchcraft.

Fallacious Phallus The physical reality of witchcraft and its phenomena had been a perennial issue in the learned discourses of sixteenth-century Europe. In Italy the controversy came to a head during the 1520s in a debate that drew together two heavyweight disputants. The lawyer Giovanni Francesco Ponzinibio proposed to refute the existence of witches, claiming that their alleged experiences were merely delusions wrought by the devil, whereas the theologian Bartolommeo Spina moved to substantiate the veracity of witches by means of their confessions and ecclesiastics’ opinions. So heated was this debate that in one of his three treatises devoted to refute Ponzinibio’s theories, Spina urged the Inquisition to proceed against Ponzinibio under suspicion of heresy, exhorting it to burn his treatise.78 Another contemporaneous work bearing upon this debate was Strix, sive de ludificatione daemonum (The Witch, or On the 77 One must wonder as to why an author so vehemently endeavoring to authenticate the existence of witches would include such a preposterous passage. For explanations, see Smith, “The Flying Phallus”; Stephens, Demon Lovers, 300–312; Mackay’s note in Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 328n. 225; and Roper, The Witch, 39. 78 Dries Vanysacker’s entry “Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco/Gianfranceso,” in Golden, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 912.

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Illusions of Demons), written by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola in order to defend the execution of ten alleged witches in his domain of Mirandola. Published in 1523, this literary dialogue was intended also for a broader audience through its translation into vernacular Italian in the following year. Pico orchestrated a fictive dialogue among four interlocutors: the witch Strix, the humanist Phronimus, and the inquisitor Dicastes endeavor to convince the skeptical Apistius that witchcraft is absolutely real. The witch provides a firsthand testimony, and the two proponents of witchcraft rebut Apistius’s objections and present their arguments.79 While virtually any image of witchcraft could serve as fodder for a debate of this kind,80 Witch Riding on a Phallus offers a distinctive opportunity for reflection on these very issues. It does so by affording the beholder a pictorial space that combines different layers of reality: the real figures of the witch and the eyewitnesses, and their imaginary world grasped through their inner and outer eyes. Consider first the ways in which the bystanders attest to the visibility of the depicted event. To judge from their reactions—the enrapt fixed gazes, astonished facial expressions, and anxious gesticulations and stances—they no doubt believe in the reality of what they see. Given the absurdity of the spectacle, however, their mixed reactions hardly bear out an epistemological commitment to the “seeing is believing” principle. Indeed, the account of illusory castration in the Malleus entails that existence of eyewitnesses could never guarantee the visibility, let alone the corporeality, of magic. Their spectatorial role seems, rather, to accomplish the opposite: it undermines the credibility frequently granted to eyewitness testimony in witch prosecutions. The eyewitnesses in themselves foreground visual uncertainty and therefore personify illusion and delusion. A viewer engaged with the question of what these bystanders see could not but wonder how seeing such a fantasy is possible in the first place. The focus shifts from visibility to reality. One explanation prevalent among those skeptics who strove to refute the existence of witches is that in such cases illusion was at work. Illusion was produced by either an “active” delusion involving cheating by means of tricks, replicas, sleights of hand, aerial effigies, and other deceptions practiced by demons upon the human mind and senses; or a “passive” delusion encompassing hallucination, sensory malfunction, and excessive imagination, through which illusions were engendered in the susceptible minds of the ignorant, the melancholic, and the credulous.81

79 Stephens, “Skepticism, Empiricism, and Proof.” 80 Emison, “Truth and Bizzarria,” 630–33; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 148–51, 169–74; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 2. In contrast, Stephens, Demon Lovers, 123, argues that pictures were used to counteract the difficulty of belief and persuade viewers of the existence of witches. This argument, however, somewhat flattens art into a mere illustration of a predetermined belief. 81 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 184–94, 239.

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Witch Riding on a Phallus intimates that both mechanisms of delusion are at work upon the scene. As I will discuss in chapter 4, skeptics argued that women denounced as witches were, in fact, afflicted with melancholy, a mental disorder that engendered delusions and rendered them incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality. This pathological argument, which acquired increasing prominence among skeptics in the second half of the sixteenth century, has its origins in the fifteenth century. Kramer, while refraining from directly connecting melancholy to witches, cited the hallucinatory effects of melancholy as a possible explanation for the experience of women being harassed by incubi.82 Early opposition to the pathological explanation did not dent its appeal. For example, the Milanese Dominican Girolamo Visconti insisted in his witchcraft treatise of ca. 1460 that “this sect [of witches] is not afflicted by a melancholic humour that would impede its members’ use of reason and their freedom of the will.”83 Pietro Pomponazzi asserts in De immortalitate animae (On the Immortality of the Soul, Bologna, 1516) that victims of melancholy became irrational with extraordinary visions such as demonic possession.84 The diagnosing of Parmigianino’s witch in terms of melancholy is aided by certain external symptoms and iconographic signs drawn from the visual repository of melancholy and the melancholic planet Saturn. For the modern viewer, these signs are perhaps not as transparent as the consecrated gesture of the head leaning on one hand, but they were nevertheless recognizable to the sixteenth-century audience.85 The witch’s crestfallen state, evinced in her crabbed and hunched posture, bulky cloak, and hooded visage, equally characterizes the melancholics in prints of The Children of Saturn (fig. 43).86 Her overcast mien represents a recurring symptom caused by the sufferer’s excess of black bile, as famously seen in Dürer’s Melencolia I.87 Her unused distaff is, as been noted earlier, a common motif of sloth but also of melancholy: sloth was associated with the melancholy disease on account of their shared traits of sadness and dejection—so much so that the personification of Sloth (Accidia)

82 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 420 (2.2.1). For the medieval roots of melancholic women inclined to delusions, see Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 144–51. 83 Translation is from Stephens, Demon Lovers, 137 (my emphasis). 84 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 372. 85 On the iconography of Saturn in witchcraft imagery, see Préaud, “La Sorcière de Noël”; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 29, 210–18. The goat on which Dürer’s witch is riding has been identified as the Capricornian goat of Saturn. On melancholic witches in art, see Préaud, “De Melencolia D.”; Tal, “Disbelieving in Witchcraft”; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 157–94; and Hults, The Witch as Muse, 157, 162, 167. 86 Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, fig. 52; and Notarp, “Jacques de Gheyn II’s Man Resting in a Field,” 311–15. 87 Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 290.

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Figure 43. Harmen Jansz. Muller, after Maarten van Heemskerck, The Melancholy Temperament, 1566, engraving, 21.5 × 23.7 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

was adopted to illustrate the melancholic temperament (fig. 41).88 Prostitution, signaled by the inverse riding position, was one of the professions falling under the planetary influence of Saturn. This link is visible in the fourteenth-century astrological cycle of Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, where Saturn’s “children” include a melancholic monk and a fornicating couple in which the woman is on top (fig. 44). In this thematic framework, the witch’s hooded eyes can represent the obstruction of an accurate perception of reality, whether interpreted as a sign of trance, a dream, or an imagination run riot.89 Once the viewer had diagnosed the 88 Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 300–302; Jackson, Melancholia and Depression, 65–77, 328; and Notarp, “Jacques de Gheyn II’s Man Resting in a Field,” 312–14, 317. On the witch’s distaff as a sign of melancholy, see Löwensteyn, “A Singular Design,” 85n. 34. 89 Francesco Maria Guazzo would later write in the chapter “Whether This Magic Can Produce True Effects” of his witchcraft treatise: “Most often the devil, being the father of lies, deceives us and blinds our eyes or mocks our other senses with vain illusory images.” Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 7.

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Figure 44. Giovanni Nicolò Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, Saturn, the Melancholic, and Mercenary Love with a Woman on Top, 1425–40, fresco. Great Hall, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua. Photo: Alinari Archives, Florence.

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witch as a melancholic, the nocturnal assembly, the joint work with a devil, and the phallic ride would all be deemed symptomatic delusions—mere hallucinations wrought by her volatile mind. Alongside the witch’s “passive” delusion, the phallus registers an “active” delusion when perceived as a visual counterfeit—that is to say, the embodiment of a devil who disguised himself in a phallic form in order to entice the witch into sexual intercourse. This idea draws together two early modern convictions. The first is that devils could transform themselves into desirable humans or objects in order to tempt their intended victims; the second, that devils markedly inclined to interact corporeally with witches.90 Two traits possessed by the phallus hint at its demonic nature. First, its extraordinary size calls forth the belief that devils were genitally well-endowed. In Pico’s Strix, the eponymous witch informs the interrogating inquisitors that the devil’s pudenda (“parti vergognose”) are larger than those of any mortal, and the interlocutor Dicastes asserts that witches delighted in copulating with devils because “their [virile] members are of an uncommon size.”91 The second diabolical clue is the appended tail. A widespread notion had it that the animalistic body parts of devils frequently survived their reincorporation into new bodies. In a woodcut illustrating Ulrich Molitor’s popular treatise De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus (On Witches and Female Soothsayers), first published in 1489 (fig. 45), a witch is enfolded in the embrace of a grinning devil, who appears to have assumed the shape of a man in all but a few respects; since the devil is incapable of fully replicating the human shape, his shapeshifting is imperfect—his clawed feet and whiplike tail protruding beneath his short jacket declare his true identity.92 The tail appended to the phallus appears a vestige of the devil’s original body. The claws attached to the testicles reinforce his identification as a devil inasmuch as they evoke the devil’s frequent manifestations in the shape of a bird. Strix, Pico’s witch, testifies that the devil has gooselike feet and identifies the devil as a sparrow as well as a “very lascivious bird” (un molto libidinoso augello).93 Accordingly, not only do the claws embody the double entendre of bird/penis, they also subtly hint at the phallus’s dual devil/penis existence. 90 On the transformation of devils, see Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 198 (1.9); Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 56; and Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 121. Although incubi typically took the upper position during intercourse with witches, instances of devils who, in order to excite witches, took the passive role were not unknown: Zapperi, The Pregnant Man, 167; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 36–39. 91 Pico della Mirandola, Libro detto strega, 124–26. For an overview of early modern theories regarding the shape and size of the devil’s member, see Masters, Eros and Evil, 17–21. 92 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 106–8; and Cole, “The Demonic Arts,” 625, fig. 2. For further discussion, see chapter 5. 93 Pico della Mirandola, Libro detto strega, 112–13.

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Figure 45. Devil Seducing a Witch, woodcut, in Ulrich Molitor, De Lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, Basel, ca. 1495, 1v. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

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This line of logic would not have been welcomed by Kramer. Aghast at the alternative explanations of witches’ purloined penises, he urged his readers not to interpret any of those dislodged organs as demons: “It should not be claimed that in members assumed in this way [i.e., penises that dwell in a nest and eat like birds] there are demons showing themselves, in the way that in assumed bodies made from air they regularly appear to sorceresses and sometimes to other humans, and interact with them.”94 Nevertheless, his endeavor to dismiss the theory that those living penises exemplify demonic corporeality in virtual bodies gives it more rather than less credence by drawing attention to the theory itself. No such restrictive injunctions constrained the viewer of Witch Riding on a Phallus in the contemplation of the question whether the phallus was of demonic origin. True, this uncertainty would have been swiftly resolved had Parmigianino chosen to depict explicitly the process of the diabolical transformation; yet the intrinsic logic of seeing witchcraft requires its absence. To picture the moment of a devil turning into a phallus would have been inherently improper because the cusp of corporeal transformation, if depicted, would have counteracted the illusory character of the phenomenon, marking it as unequivocally real.95

Protective Priapus The last interpretive path brings the satirical dimension of Witch Riding on a Phallus to its climax. The phallus, which until this point has been perceived as severed or submissive, comically regains its potency by dint of a stark visual allusion to phallic amulets. The ancient Roman superstition that a phallic image could remedy afflictions caused by magic, avert the Evil Eye, and bring good fortune gave rise to a production of phalluses in diverse media, from mosaics and relief sculptures to tintinnabula (bronze phallic windchimes figuring an arrangement of dangling bells), charms, and badges. Their apotropaic function is captured in the Latin word fascinum (fascination), which denoted the male organ, the phallic amulet, and the Evil Eye.96 Phallic brooches and badges regained popularity in Northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Inscriptions on some of these badges testify to their protective virtue, though their topsy-turvy display of ambulant phalluses with bestial body parts and women mounting phalluses or hanging on to a pair of breeches also links them to 94 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 328 (2.1.7). See Stephens, Demon Lovers, 310–11. 95 This logic follows Stephens, Demon Lovers, 296, who refers to images of werewolves and witch-cats. 96 Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 63–64; Ernst Kuhnert’s entry “Fascinum,” in Von Pauly and Wissowa, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie, 6:2009–14; and H. Herter’s entry “Phallophorie et Phallos,” in Von Pauly and Wissowa, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie, 38:1674–1748.

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Figure 46. Woman Astride a Phallus, ca. 1400–1425, badge, tin and lead alloy, 2.5 × 2.2 cm. Musée Cluny, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

carnival events (fig. 46).97 The protective merit of the phallus (and the ithyphallic god Priapus) survived in Renaissance Italy, where talismanic artifacts in phallic shape were evidently known, if not actually used. Pietro Aretino, in a letter dated to ca. 1537, mentions phallic brooches when discussing natural feelings about sexuality: “It would seem to me that such a thing, given to us by nature to preserve the species, should be worn around the neck as a pendant and as a brooch on berets.”98 Equally 97 Koldeweij, “A Barefaced Roman de la Rose,” 499–501; Jones, The Secret Middle Ages, 249–56; Simons, The Sex of Men, 76, 88–91; and Rasmussen, “Hybrid Creatures.” 98 Aretino, Lettere 1.315; translation is from Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 85. For further evidence, see Simons, The Sex of Men, 57.

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Figure 47. Northern Italian, A Scene of Copulation, ca. 1480–1500, verso of a copper engraving plate, 15 × 22.4 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

if not more illuminating are the visual and functional affinities of some images to ancient and late medieval phallic amulets. In a late fifteenth-century print from north Italy (fig. 47), a hyperbolic phallus rendered with animal appendages and a bell dangling from its “neck” bears an authenticating resemblance to ancient amulets and late medieval badges, a resemblance that may indicate the phallus’s duty to protect the sexual potency of the couple engaging in copulation in the vicinity.99 Another bestial phallus with wings and a bell decorates a mid-sixteenth-century majolica drug jar, most likely to ensure the efficacy of the drug.100 Witch Riding on a Phallus invites associations with earlier phallic badges in two key respects: in the inclusion of an extraordinary phallus—at once disproportionate, animalistic, and mobile—and in the overturning of gender roles. The fact that a witchcraft scene accommodates the phallus makes its mock-apotropaic function all the more suggestive. It generates a curious situation in which the phallus is dominated by the witch, whose malevolent power it concurrently aims to ward off. This paradox and its comic effects stem from certain superstitious theories, according to which laughter was integral to the functioning of the 99 Simons, The Sex of Men, 85. Anthony Colantuono also recognizes the visual allusion to talismanic badges though he comes to a different conclusion; Colantuono, “The Penis Possessed,” 102–3. 100 Hess, “Pleasure, Shame and Healing,” 17–21, fig. 1.6.

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mechanism of amulets designed to dispel the Evil Eye. The ridicule and the mockery serve to disarm the Evil Eye and protect the amulet’s possessor. Plutarch explains: “That is why people think that the category of ‘anti-evil-eye’ amulets help against envy, because they draw off the gaze by their bizarreness, so that it rests less upon those that are affected by it.”101 A phallus with eyes carved on the glans as evidence of its efficacity against the Evil Eye is one example of the comic paradoxes found in ancient amulets. Parmigianino’s grotesque image of an absurd phallus whose shielding power is entertainingly directed against its rider alludes to talismans shaped to defeat the Evil Eye by attracting its glance and deflecting it from the intended victim. Yet, Witch Riding on a Phallus has no such superstitious motive engine at its core; its intention is rather to ridicule vacuous beliefs in the power of images and artifacts. This satirical dimension is enhanced by other aspects in the image that viewers attentive to the talismanic allusion of the phallus would have been predisposed to recognize as additional antidotes against witchcraft. The Evil Eye, supposedly working through the emission of harmful particles brought about by staring fixedly at someone, was not classified in ancient Rome as magic or superstition but as a natural phenomenon, explained through a “scientific” knowledge in the grasp of the educated elite.102 This changed in the f ifteenth century, when the Evil Eye (malocchio) came to be known as a type of maleficium.103 In witchcraft imagery, artists imparted visual expression to this malevolent source of power. It has been pointed out that the witches in the Stregozzo and Dürer’s engraving were modeled upon Invidia (Envy) in Andrea Mantegna’s Battle of the Sea Gods (fig. 27), yet little has been said about the motive behind this borrowing. One obvious inducement to appropriate elements from Mantegna’s Invidia must have been its status as a celebrated prototype of a wicked hag. Another, offered by Hults, is that in referencing Mantegna’s inventive Battle through this quote, Dürer wished to highlight his own enviable inventive virtuosity.104 There is yet another account to explain this visual reference. The vice of Envy is deeply connected to the Evil Eye. Derived from invidere, “not seeing,” 101 Plutarch, Moralia 681f–2a; translation is from Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts, 223. On the Evil Eye, see Levi, “The Evil Eye and the Lucky Hunchback,” 225–32; Johns, Sex and Symbol; Csapo, “Riding the Phallus for Dionysus”; Clarke, Looking at Laughter, 67–73; Mellinkoff, Averting Demons, 141–43; Simons, The Sex of Men, 55; and Elliot, Beware the Evil Eye, 2:214. 102 Elliot, Beware the Evil Eye, 2:63. 103 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 107 (1.2), 113–19 (1.2), 152 (1.5); Vairo, De fascino; Callisen, “The Evil Eye in Italian Art”; Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, 29–30; Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition, 196; Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 140; and Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 64. 104 Hults, The Witch as Muse, 31. That witches were envious is questioned by Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 291–300.

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for the envious does not enjoy what he sees, Invidia reflects the notion that envy emanates from the eyes. In ancient Rome, the eyes of the envious were believed to be powerful, thus invidia stood for a malign power.105 Modeling witch figures on Mantegna’s Invidia, therefore, announces both their potent Evil Eye and their envious disposition.106 In turn, Parmigianino articulated the witch’s Evil Eye by its absence. The covering of her eyes deactivates her perilous gaze.107 In one sonnet, fifteenth-century Florentine poet Domenico di Giovanni, alias Burchiello, condemns the old witch (vecchia strega) to blindness: “May you go blind … may your eyes be plucked and put under salt” (salt was a popular antidote against witches’ maleficia) because “a deer wolf has no such a sharp vision as you have when you look and guard.”108 The urge to circumvent the witch’s hazardous stare may justify the gathering of the onlookers behind her back in Witch Riding on a Phallus, a circumspection complying with the precautionary recommendation that inquisitors ought to make prosecuted witches file backwards into the court in order to avert the harm of the Evil Eye.109 An image of a witch with covered eyes also alludes to the mechanism of the image-magic, namely, the ability to harm a person in the flesh by damaging a visual or material representation of that person. Based on this principle, early modern viewers attempted to divest the powers of devils, idols, Jews, and other enemies of Christianity pictured in manuscripts and paintings by obliterating their potent body parts, in particular the eyes, noses, and genitals. However, as Michael Camille has evocatively argued, inasmuch as these instances of expurgation were acts of vandalism, they were also acts of representation because they drew attention to the altered or obscured area.110 If Parmigianino screened the witch’s eyes with the intention of obstructing her malicious power, he also marked them as the very locus of that power. The superstitious dimension brought forth by the phallus and the hooded witch proposes the consideration of other constituents in Witch Riding on a Phallus as counter-magical catalysts. At least some erudite viewers were likely to be attuned 105 Dunbabin and Dickie, “Invidia rumpantur pectora”; Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch, 147; Broedel, The Malleus Maleficarum, 23; Dickie, “The Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye”; and Cole, “The Demonic Arts,” 639n. 72. The vice of Envy was often attributed to old witches, whose jealousy of younger women for their beauty and fecundity prompted them to harm infants and impede procreation. Roper, The Witch, 87–116, esp. 96–100; and Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 68–69. 106 On the conflation of Envy and witch in Jacques de Gheyn II’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, see Tal, “Skepticism and Morality,” 20–26. 107 On the sunken, shaded eye of Giotto’s Invidia, see Shoaf, “Eyeing Envy,” 129–32. 108 Bettella, The Ugly Woman, 69–71. 109 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 552 (3.15). 110 Camille, “Obscenity under Erasure.” On obliteration of the eyes from Italian Renaissance paintings, see Freedberg, The Power of Images, 415–17.

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Figure 48. Roman amulet pendant, 2nd century CE, gold, pearls, and amethyst, 3.1 × 1.8 cm. The Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, Baltimore. Photo: James T. VanRensselaer.

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Figure 49. Bernardino Detti, Madonna of the Pergola (detail), 1523, tempera on panel, 213 × 164 cm. Museo Civico, Pistoia. Photo: Alinari Archives, Florence.

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to the analogy of the image with a particular ancient apotropaion known in various modes of representation—medals, engraved gems, marble reliefs, and mosaics. It represents the Evil Eye as a single eye being attacked from all sides by the emblems of defending deities, including the owl of Minerva, the thunderbolts of Jupiter, the moon of Diana, and the phallus of Priapus, or by a variety of animals (fig. 48).111 In Witch Riding on a Phallus, too, one can detect a medley of superstitious antidotes targeting the Evil Eye, as incarnated by the witch. The owls swoop ominously toward the witch in what may well be construed as an attack. The hybrid creature clings to her shoulders from the rear in a conventional position denoting assault.112 In its backswept horns and upraised forepaws, this hybrid resembles the animals attacking the Evil Eye in the ancient charms. And the crescent moon is a standard component in sixteenth-century Italian amulets.113 This gamut of superstitious remedies, along with the phallus itself, invokes the eclectic combination of catalysts in ancient works, as well as the cluster of artifacts (an Agnus Dei pendant, a cross, a coral branch, an animal tooth, and so on) fastened to apotropaic chains that were in use in Renaissance Italy (fig. 49).114 Taken separately, the presence of the phallus, the witch’s covered eyes, or the presence of any single animal would not suffice to identify Witch Riding on a Phallus as an image that satirizes the belief in the efficacy of amulets. Yet collectively, as we find here, the amalgam is indeed compelling.

Renaissance Humor A submissive man, a severed member, a demonic counterfeit, a protective amulet—this four-pronged reading of Parmigianino’s phallus may look like an overproliferation, yet to force this protean motif to represent a single indivisible idea is to deny its intrinsic variability, occasioned by the framework of witchcraft and Parmigianino’s shrewd web of simultaneous meanings. The more meanings the viewer gleans from Witch Riding on a Phallus the more he or she will enjoy the wit and humor embedded in it. Each of the readings enacts a differing reaction that contemporaries were prone to feel in relation to witchcraft: imagining the domain of witchcraft as an inverse 111 For further examples, see Elworthy, The Evil Eye, 81–88; Stefaniak, “Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo,” 223; and Elliot, Beware the Evil Eye, 2:233. 112 Wolfthal, Images of Rape, 107–8, discusses the surprising attack of the man from behind the woman as an act of rape. In Urs Graf’s 1512 drawing Hermit and Devil (Stephens, Demon Lovers, f ig. 8), a devil attacks a friar from behind by placing a hand on his shoulder. His tail curling up in front implies a sexual molestation. 113 Zambelli, “Astrologia, magia e alchimia,” 352–53, figs. 2.26.2, 2.26.5. 114 Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family, 202–3.

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realm; deciphering, and then disseminating, incidents of witchcraft such as loss of potency; debating the veracity of witchcraft; and shielding against witchcraft. The conflicting reactions stirred by the image—ridiculing witches yet broadcasting their misdeeds, refuting their existence yet guarding against their harmful magic—satirize the blurred boundary line between belief and doubt with regard to the witches’ reality and, more broadly, the hesitancy and vacillation felt towards this relatively new phenomenon.115 Overall, the baffling experience of understanding witchcraft emblematized in this interpretive multiplicity occasions other reactions of doubting, hesitating or miscomprehending witchcraft. The upside-down world is shared by the comic and the demonic, making humor inherent to the subject matter of witchcraft.116 Witch Riding on a Phallus invokes a whole gamut of jocose characteristics: shifting identities, mistrusting appearances, mocking the foolishness and credulity of others, humiliating the innocents, and embracing the absurd, the unexpected, and the obscene. The witch and the cuckold are two recurring characters in Italian jokes, and their being tricked (beffati) by the devil or their delusional minds is comparable to the perennially ridiculed figure, whose gullible character frequently serves as the butt of practical jokes called beffe.117 Most critically, Witch Riding on a Phallus approximates jokes hinging on ambiguity, the type of creative wit that Baldassare Castiglione proclaims in Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), published in 1528, to be “the most effective, although they do not always arouse mirth, since they are more usually praised for their ingenuity than for their humor.”118 Ambiguity, Castiglione asserts, can emerge in the stage of reception, not inception: “What can be phrased as an amusing witticism can also be interpreted as a serious comment intended for praise or censure, sometimes with the use of exactly the same words.”119 Parmigianino, anticipating Nicolò Franco’s riddle, devised a witty image of a phallus that embodies opposite attributes: it is dead but has a life of its own (detached yet erect and autonomous); human but animalistic (both visually and euphemistically); bare but disguised (as a devil); corporeal but illusory; weak but protective (severed yet talismanic). In Witch Riding on a Phallus the double entendres and the multiple layers of reading demonstrate how, 115 Writers often pronounced opposite standpoints in the same treatise without attempting to reconcile the inconsistency. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 182, 184, 192; and Stephens, Demon Lovers, 10. 116 Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 133–34. 117 Burke, “Frontiers of the Comic in Early Modern Italy.” 118 Castiglione, The Courtier, 166. 119 Castiglione, The Courtier, 156–57. To illustrate, he relates an incident in a church of a woman who refuses to give alms to a beggar but also refuses to dismiss him, a behavior variously interpreted by three witnesses as an act of severe censure, modest praise, and biting sarcasm. On Castiglione’s classification of jokes, see Bowen, Humour and Humanism.

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when it comes to witchcraft, language can be unstable and apt to mislead. The French judge Pierre de Lancre asserts in Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons (Picture of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons) of 1612 that “the devil’s promises and answers are always deliberately duplicitous and double entendres.”120 It is this demonic language that Witch Riding on a Phallus “speaks.” Peter Webb, the first to reproduce the version with the faceless phallus, relied on Giorgio Vasari’s (controversial) report that at the end of his life Parmigianino fell into melancholy and eccentricity due to his obsession with alchemy, in speculating that Witch Riding on a Phallus is “an autograph work, reflecting the nightmare visions of Parmigianino’s last years.”121 He finds resemblance in its content and “freedom of technique” to The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos) in Francisco Goya’s etched series of the Caprichos. Another scholar proposed Picart’s version as a visual source for the witches’ broom flight in another plate from the Caprichos, A Fine Teacher! (Linda maestra! fig. 50).122 The stylistic and thematic affinities of the Caprichos plates with Parmigianino’s image are indeed striking. I would additionally offer We Must Be off with the Dawn (Si amanece, nos Vamos) as a conceptual counterpart to Parmigianino’s tableau. Grotesque, naked witches gather at a sabbath below a vast inky sky punctured with stars (fig. 51). The central witch, addressing a captive audience of colleagues who cluster around her in rapt attention, perches on a rock in the shape of a huge bum—the puckered anus is conspicuously in evidence. Goya’s severance of this body part, a leitmotif of mundus inversus, marks a new pinnacle of somatic grotesquery.123 Goya intended the Caprichos to ridicule vulgar prejudices and to “banish harmful ideas commonly believed,” but this was a time when belief in witches had been laid to rest and thus his skeptical stance did not present itself as pioneering.124 Parmigianino himself might well have wished to cast doubt on witchcraft beliefs through his image, but his historical period saw fervent witchhunts and fierce debates about the existence of witches, which were still far more coming to a resolution. Even his extraordinary comic relief could not relieve the times of the gravity of its concerns. 120 De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 187 (3.1.2). 121 Webb, The Erotic Arts, 120. 122 De-Viejo, “Francesco Goya,” 7–8. The unmodified version might as well have yielded to the escalating penchant in the eighteenth century for erotic prints, including detached penises of all sizes, some are being ridden by men and women. Neret, Erotica Universalis, 70. For eighteenth-century literary and pictorial pornography, see Hunt, The Invention of Pornography. 123 Stoichita and Coderch, Goya, 119–21. 124 As Goya announced in the preparatory study for The Sleep of Reason and in a newspaper advertisement for the Caprichos. See Stoichita and Coderch, Goya, 171, 288.

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Figure 50. Francisco Goya, A Fine Teacher!, plate 68 of the Caprichos, 1799, etching and aquatint, 21 × 15 cm. Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

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Figure 51. Francisco Goya, We Must Be off with the Dawn, plate 71 of the Caprichos, 1799, etching and aquatint, 19.8 × 14.9 cm. Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

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Smith, Moira. “The Flying Phallus and the Laughing Inquisitor: Penis Theft in the Malleus Maleficarum.” Journal of Folklore Research 39 (2002): 85–117. Stefaniak, Regina. “Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo: An Archaeology of the Gaze.” Art History 16 (1993): 203–38. Stein, Perrin. “Introduction.” In Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Perrin Stein, Charlotte Guichard, Rena M. Hoisington, and Elizabeth M. Rudy, 3–13. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013. Stephens, Walter. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Stephens, Walter. “Skepticism, Empiricism, and Proof in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Strix.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 11 (2016): 6–29. Stewart, Alison G. Unequal Couples: A Study of Unequal Couples in Northern Art. New York: Abaris Books, 1977. Stewart, Alison G. “Distaffs and Spindles: Sexual Misbehavior in Sebald Beham’s Spinning Bee.” In Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Jane L. Carroll and Alison G. Stewart, 128–54. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Stewart, Pamela J., and Andrew Strathern. Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors, and Gossip. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Stoichita, Victor I., and Anna Maria Coderch. Goya: The Last Carnival. London: Reaktion, 1999. Sullivan, Margaret A. “The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien.” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 333–401. Swan, Claudia. Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Tal, Guy. “Disbelieving in Witchcraft: Allori’s Melancholic Circe in the Palazzo Salviati.” Athanor 22 (2004): 57–66. Tal, Guy. “Witches on Top: Magic, Power, and Imagination in the Art of Early Modern Italy.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University at Bloomington, 2006. Tal, Guy. “Skepticism and Morality in Jacques de Gheyn II’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 44 (2022): 5–27. Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Talvacchia, Bette. “Pornography.” In The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, 767–71. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2010. Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Thomas, Joe Alan. “Eroticism in the Art of Parmigianino and Its Implications for the Mannerist Style.” M.A. Thesis, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 1988. Thompson, Wendy. “A Fallacy Exposed: The True Subject of a Rare Print.” Burlington Magazine 150 (2008): 186–89.

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Toscan, Jean. Le carnaval du langage: Le lexique érotique des poètes de l’équivoque de Burchiello à Marino (XVe–XVIIe siècles). 4 vols. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981. Turner, James Grantham. Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 1630–1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Turner, James Grantham. Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017. Varriano, John. Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. von Pauly, August Friedrich, and Georg Wissowa, eds. Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1894–1919. Waddington, Raymond B. Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in SixteenthCentury Literature and Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Walker, Daniel Pickering. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. London: The Warburg Institute and University of London, 1958. Webb, Peter. The Erotic Arts. London: Secker and Warburg, 1975. Weigert, Laura. “Autonomy as Deviance: Sixteenth-Century Images of Witches and Prostitutes.” In Solitary Pleasures: The Historical Literary and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism, ed. Paula Bennett and Vernon A. Rosario II, 19–47. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” In On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell, 1–23. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Wind, Barry. “Pitture ridicole: Some Late Cinquecento Comic Genre Paintings.” Storia dell’arte 20 (1974): 25–35. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969. Wolfthal, Diane. Images of Rape: The “Heroic” Tradition and its Alternatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Zambelli, Paola, ed. “Astrologia, magia e alchimia nel Rinascimento fiorentino ed europeo.” In Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del ‘500, vol. 3, Relazioni artistiche: Il linguaggio architettonico, 309–435. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1983. Zapperi, Roberto. The Pregnant Man. Trans. Brian Williams. 4th ed. London: Harwook Academic Publishers, 1991. Zika, Charles. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

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4. Magical Metamorphoses Variations on the Myths of Circe and Medea Abstract: Greco-Roman literature played a significant role in formulating the early modern idea of the witch. Analyzing works produced mainly by Florentine, Bolognese, and Genoese artists between 1550 and 1650, this chapter argues that Italian artists reinforced the association of ancient witches with the new concept of witchcraft by subverting and obscuring the reality, methods, and intentions of the sorcery performed by Circe and Medea. First, artists refuted the reality of transformation by presenting Circe as an exemplar of contemporary medical theories concerning delusional witches. Second, artists rendered Circe’s transformation of Ulysses’s comrades amusingly absurd by emphasizing the visual resemblance between figures undergoing metamorphosis and hybrid creatures. Third, artists portrayed Medea as a malignant witch by obscuring the benign nature of her rejuvenation of Aeson. Keywords: Ulysses, Aeson, transformation, rejuvenation, melancholy, delusion, hybrid

Circe and Medea, the two most celebrated witches of the Greco-Roman tradition, were frequently depicted throughout Renaissance and Baroque Italy in fresco cycles, paintings, majolica ware, cassone panels, emblematic illustrations, prints, and drawings.1 In keeping with their descriptions in classical texts, Italian artists portrayed both witches as beautiful young women,2 and focused on their magical ability to manipulate men’s forms through their pharmaceutical knowledge of herbs and drugs, exemplified particularly by Circe’s metamorphosis of Ulysses’s comrades into various beasts and Medea’s rejuvenation of her father-in-law Aeson. 1 In addition to the images discussed in the present chapter, see Pigler, Barockthemen, 2: 170–71 (Medea and Aeson), 308–9 (Circe and Ulysses). 2 Witches in Greek texts—our primary sources for Circe and Medea—are described as young and attractive, in contrast with those portrayed by Roman poets, who are almost uniformly old and ugly. This external difference reflects the witches’ dispositions and motives, which are often crueler and more hostile in Roman literature. Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag,” 46–47.

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_ch04

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What significance did these images hold in developing the early modern idea of witchcraft? The prevalence of female witches, young and old, in antiquity reinforced the early modern conviction about women’s culpability in witchcraft.3 In their activities, Circe, Medea, Simaetha, Erichtho, Pamphile, Meroe, and Canidia, among other witches, echoed the early modern stereotype of the witch: they committed infanticide, transformed men into animals, shapeshifted into birds, reanimated the dead, concocted magical brews out of herbs and body parts, performed incantations and nocturnal rituals, and bragged about their ability to invert the natural order. Considering ancient witches as historical figures, demonologists then used these classical accounts to adduce evidence of various supernatural powers. 4 As the classical witches par excellence, Circe and Medea became synonymous with streghe. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola complains in his Strix (1523) that the ancients had only three or four celebrated witches, Medea, Canidia, and Erichtho, whereas today one can find six hundred Medeas in one city and twelve thousand Circes in another.5 In this chapter, I explore a selection of artworks produced in Florence, Bologna, and Genoa between 1550 and 1650 to identify shifting attitudes and interpretive trajectories in pictorial variants of the myths of Circe and Medea. Unlike other mythological figures that feature prominently in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, Circe and Medea have rarely been the subjects of in-depth analysis. The few studies are still valuable: Françoise and Henri Bardon have outlined the iconography of Medea and Aeson in French and Italian images, and Bertina Suida Manning has analyzed the symbolic and allegorical usage of Circe in Genoese Baroque art.6 Charles Zika advanced our understanding of the topic by examining fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printed images of ancient witches, particularly Circe, in relation to the tropes and themes surrounding early modern witchcraft.7 At variance with these studies, I argue that artistic depictions of magical metamorphoses in this period emphasize ambiguity and uncertainty, obscuring the magical process and its outcome and casting doubt on its reality. In doing so, artists promoted their own license to imaginatively and wittily re-create classical texts while evoking the new conception of witchcraft. 3 Pierre de Lancre cites such evidence to demonstrate women’s inclination for witchcraft: “This is readily seen in the works of Greek, Latin, Italian, and French poets, each of whom celebrated some woman as an excellent female magician or witch”; De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 67. See also Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 144–45; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 40–44; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 131. 4 Montesano, Classical Culture and Witchcraft, 197, 226, 233, refers to the treatises of Girolamo Visconti (1490), Lambert Daneau (1574), and Pierre de Lancre (1612). 5 Pico della Mirandola, Dialogo intitolato La strega, 75. Roger Ascham fears that “Some Circes” will transform a young Englishman who visits Italy to an Italian; Roberts, “The Descendants of Circe,” 188. 6 Bardon and Bardon, “Médée rajeunissant Éson”; and Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe.” 7 Zika, “Images of Circe”; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 125–55.

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This chapter explores three methods of subverting magic. The first section examines how the debate surrounding the reality of witchcraft, and transformation in particular, found expression in art. In portraying Circe as a delusional melancholic, artists borrowed from psycho-medical explanations for the witchcraft phenomenon theorized by skeptics. The second section investigates how artists met the challenge of capturing a kinetic image of metamorphosis in a static medium. Circe’s transformations spurred artists to invent novel magical procedures with grotesque, amusing outcomes by conflating the transient in-between state of transformation from men into beasts and the inherently stable form of a humananimal hybrid. The third section analyzes some narratological aspects of scenes portraying Medea’s rejuvenation of Aeson, in which artists imply the corruption of Medea’s benign sorcery in a way that identifies her with the stereotypical evil witch. This chapter, then, interrogates the boundaries of distinctive opposites in respect to magic: the real and the fantastic, the metamorphosis and the hybrid, the benevolent and the malicious.

Circe and Skepticism Among those late medieval mythographers who denied or rationalized mythical transformations—not so much to underline their obvious fictitiousness as to invest them with a moral, poetic, or allegorical reading—the fourteenth-century poet Giovanni del Virgilio deemed Circe’s transformation of Ulysses’s men to be a plausible event given that she was, after all, a witch, known to be accomplished in the magical arts.8 As early as the fifteenth century, however, such an explanation was rendered unsatisfactory as the veracity of witchcraft itself became a subject of debate, and a number of skeptical demonologists denied the efficacy of magic along with the reality of nocturnal flights and other diabolical rituals supposedly performed by witches. Despite Zika’s assertion that “stories and images from classical literature which communicated cases of the transforming powers of sorcerers and witches could not but help strengthen belief in these powers among their readers,”9 I begin my study of mythological sorceresses in Italian artworks by examining how the representation of Circe was conditioned by artists’ desire to present a logical argument against the existence of witches. 8 Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh, 105–7, 187. On medieval claims that Circe’s magic was a fiction, metaphor, or illusion, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 40–41. 9 Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 131. Zika concludes that “visual representations of Circe must have helped consolidate belief in the use of such powers by some in the contemporary world”; Zika, “Images of Circe,” paragraph 34. However, he does find signs of demonic delusion, such as the trickery performed by Circe’s assistant in a woodcut in Hartmann Schedel’s Liber chronicarum (1493).

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Figure 52. Alessandro Allori and collaborators, Ulysses and Circe, ca. 1575–76, fresco. Cortile degli Imperatori, Palazzo Salviati, Florence. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY.

The fable of Circe is related in book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey and is reiterated by Apollonius Rhodius and Ovid, among others.10 Odysseus and his shipwrecked comrades seek shelter in Circe’s palace on her island, not expecting to be met with a dreadful sort of hospitality. By giving them to drink a magical potion and smiting them with her wand, Circe transforms the companions into swine, lions, and wolves. On hearing of the outcome of this encounter, Odysseus rushes to her palace but not before Mercury has a chance to equip him with an apotropaic herb 10 The fable appears later in Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.662–752; Virgil, Aeneid 7.10–24; Horace, Epistles 1.2.18–27; and Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.276–415. For further classical and contemporary sources, see Lorandi, Il Mito di Ulisse, 435–50; and Yarnall, Transformations of Circe, 9–25, 53–98.

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Figure 53. Giovanni Stradano, Ulysses and Circe, 1562, fresco. Sala di Penelope, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

that undoes the effect of Circe’s drugs. In due course, Circe offers him the potion but quickly realizes that he is immune to her magic. When her year-long amorous dalliance with Odysseus comes to an end, Circe restores the men to their original form and releases them to pursue the remainder of their journey. The Circe myth was a common subject in fresco cycles of the Homeric epic, which became popular décor of Italian villas and palazzi in the second half of the sixteenth century following the first Italian printed editions of the Odyssey in Greek (1488) and Latin (1510) and preceding its first Italian translation in 1582. A case in point is the sixteen scenes frescoed on the lunettes and vaults of the two arcades in the Cortile degli Imperatori of Palazzo Salviati in Florence by Alessandro Allori (1535–1607) and three collaborators between 1575 and 1576.11 Ulysses and Circe (fig. 52) clearly drew on the Odyssey fresco cycle produced by the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet, known as Giovanni Stradano (1523–1605), in 1562 to decorate Eleonora da Toledo’s Sala di Penelope in the Palazzo Vecchio (fig. 53). Stradano conforms to the sixteenth-century Italian tradition of foregrounding Ulysses’s 11 On this commission of Jacopo di Alamanno Salviati, see Pampaloni, Il Palazzo Portinari-Salviati, 50–52.

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Figure 54. Pseudo-Caroselli, Melancholic Circe, oil on canvas, 55 × 79 cm. Museo Statale d’Arte Medievale e Moderna, Arezzo. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

confrontation with Circe, who has just transformed his companions into beasts by administering her magic brew, while relegating the encounter between Ulysses and Mercury to the background.12 Allori likewise arranged the apotropaic scene in the second plane but curiously removed the moment at which Ulysses approaches Circe. Preoccupied with her magic, the sorceress is seated in isolation against a screening rock. She no longer has in her possession the usual bowl of poison but rather a book that leans open on the rock ledge beside her and a wand with which she points at a wolf standing close by. Significantly, she strikes the conventional pose of melancholy, her tilted head cupped in one palm.13 12 Stradano also painted a panel of Ulysses and Circe in 1570 for Francesco I de’ Medici’s studiolo. The meeting of Ulysses and Mercury now captures the foreground, and the scene of Ulysses drinking from Circe’s potion is relegated to background. This places Mercury’s apotropaic herb at the very center of the composition, appropriate for a studiolo that stores medical herbs and other natural antidotes. On Allori’s influence from Stradano, see Lorandi, Il Mito di Ulisse, 464–65; and Tal, “Disbelieving in Witchcraft,” 58–59. Ulysses confronting Circe is a typical scene in Italian fresco cycles of the Odyssey: Bologna, Palazzo Poggi, Sala di Polifemo, 1550–51; Rome, Palazzo Ricci-Sacchetti, 1553–56; Bergamo, Palazzo della Prefettura, 1555; Genoa, Palazzo della Meridiana, 1560–65; and Rome, Palazzo Farnese, Camerino Farnese, 1595. 13 On the resemblance of her f igure in coiffure and bodily conf iguration to the mournful maiden illustrated in Francesco Doni’s I marmi (Venice, 1552–53), see Tal, “Disbelieving in Witchcraft,” 59, and fig. 4.

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Figure 55. Pseudo-Caroselli, Circe and Melancholic Ulysses, oil on canvas, 55 × 79 cm. Museo Statale d’Arte Medievale e Moderna, Arezzo. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

Although in Northern art witches had been associated with melancholy as early as Lucas Cranach, at that time a melancholic Circe was a novelty in Italian art.14 Marco Lorandi has traced the genesis of Allori’s solitary Circe to Dosso Dossi’s Borghese Sorceress (fig. 2) and his Circe in the National Gallery in Washington, DC, but these figures are not deployed in melancholy.15 Allori’s fresco is the first in a sequence of Circe figures adopting the pensive stance, face leaning on palm, with the last in the series produced by the Naples-based artist Francesco Solimena (1657–1747, Ulster Museum, Belfast). Not long after Allori marked the beginning of this tradition, an anonymous artist dubbed by art historians “Pseudo-Caroselli” created a pair of pendants depicting Circe and Ulysses for the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici 14 On Cranach’s painted variants of Melancholia (ca. 1528–35), see Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 99–108. The first study to associate the witches in Cranach’s Melancholia with the melancholic symptom of delusions is Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 292. The goat with absent hind legs on which the witch is riding in Dürer’s engraving has been identified as the Capricornian goat of Saturn, the planet responsible for melancholy; Préaud, “La Sorcière de Noël”; and Zika, Exorcising Our Demons, 424. Witches appear among Saturn’s children in a design by Maerten de Vos, engraved by Crispijn van de Passe in the 1580s; Zika, Exorcising Our Demons, 438–42. For melancholic witches in seventeenth-century German and Dutch art, see Glaesemer, Joseph Werner, 40, 131; Mahon and Sutton, Artists in 17th Century Rome, 11–12; and Tal, “Skepticism and Morality,” 9–16. 15 Lorandi, Il Mito di Ulisse, 464.

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(figs. 54 and 55). One pendant features a melancholic Circe, whose solitude is highlighted, as in Allori’s fresco, against the contrast of a dark rocky background. The other pendant unites Circe with a melancholic Ulysses under a baldacchino decorated with the Florentine giglio; note the lion’s frontal presentation, similar to the lions accompanying Allori’s Circe.16 The leading Genoese master in the first half of the Seicento, Giovanni Battista Castiglione (il Grechetto, 1609–64), executed in the 1640s and 1650s no less than eight works featuring Circe, which provided him with an opportunity to merge two of his favorite themes, animals and classical mythology. In four of these works—two paintings, an etching, and a preparatory drawing—the Homeric sorceress strikes the standard melancholic pose of head supported by arm (figs. 56 and 57).17 Similar to Allori and Pseudo-Caroselli, Castiglione sequestered his Circes so inescapably that no human character, not even Ulysses, is ever present.18 Unlike the melancholy of Pseudo-Caroselli’s Ulysses, amply 16 Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 113. For the attribution of these pendants to Pseudo-Caroselli, see Sgarbi, Pseudo-Caroselli, 11. On this artist, see chapter 5. 17 One painting in Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, and another in an unknown location. See Percy, “Magic and Melancholy,” f igs. 13–16; and Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, cat. nos. 70, E.23. Given that in some paintings by Castiglione and Vassallo the menagerie of swine, lion, and wolf attending the protagonist according to classical accounts is ill-represented and Ulysses is starkly absent, their sorceresses may be identified as one of the Circean characters in Renaissance epic poems—Melissa and Alcina in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516) and Armida in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581). The multitudinously portrayed sorceress can therefore be best perceived as a composite of a Circean witch of no particular literary abode. It is, however, indicative that Circe was tremendously popular among Genoese Baroque artists, who painted her with or without Ulysses. See Orlando, Anton Maria Vassallo, 30–35, figs. 36–43, cat. no. 1.5b; and Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe,” figs. 677, 698. Moreover, Castiglione had a proclivity to mythological scenes, while he scarcely painted scenes from chivalric poems. For instance, in a pair of pendants, he juxtaposed Circe with another mythological hero, Orpheus. In the only instance of a mid-transformation scene, Castiglione depicts a man transforming into a swine, the animal associated only with the myth of Circe. Finally, Soprani, Vite, 310, identifies Circe in one of Castiglione’s paintings, and a painting of Ulysses and Circe with men turned into fish are listed in Gerolamo Balbi’s inventory of 1649; Standring and Clayton, Castiglione, 106n. 43. For Castiglione’s Circe, see also Ciliberto, “Tradizione ed interpretazione letteraria.” 18 Perhaps Castiglione saw Pseudo-Caroselli’s pendants when he visited Florence on the way from Rome to Genoa. His paintings and etching echo Pseudo-Caroselli’s Melancholic Circe in the depiction of an elegantly dressed Circe sitting frontally and striking the melancholic pose as various animals spread out on the opposite side of the composition. Castiglione’s stay in Florence is evident by the fact that, around 1650, Giovan Carlo de’ Medici commissioned him to paint Circe Transforming Men into Beasts (Circe is not in melancholy) for the Palazzo Pitti; Gregori, Paintings, cat. 580. Another witch in a similarly melancholic configuration appears in Castiglione’s painting in Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. The figure is often identified as Medea insofar as she broods balefully, blood-tipped sword in hand, above a slain child; Percy, “Magic and Melancholy.” In a painting by Luigi Miradori, called Genovesino (ca. 1600–1657), a woman indifferently touching a dead infant, whose head is stuck with a pin, was identified as a maga by Sgarbi, Il male, 1:333, cat. 98. However, this figure has more sensibly been identified as the Jewish mother, who, according to the Life of St. James the Minor in the Golden Legend, cooked and ate her little son during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. Frangi, Guazzoni, and Tanzi, Genovesino, 6, 32, 48–49.

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Figure 56. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholic Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1645–55, pen and brown ink, 19.8 × 28 cm. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. Photo: Wolfgang Fuhrmannek.

Figure 57. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholic Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1650–55, etching, 21.2 × 30.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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borne out as grief at the fate of his companions, that of Circe cannot be justified by means of mythological record; no reference to Circe’s contemplative disposition is to be found in any text, classical or contemporary. Circe’s melancholy has been interpreted as an emotional state, whether sadness, pensiveness, or meditation.19 However, the Northern and Italian depictions of witches, other than Circe, plunged in melancholy strongly suggest that the explanation lies outside the myth. Skeptics about the reality of witchcraft theorized that women confessing to be witches were in fact afflicted by melancholy, a mental disorder that distorted their imaginative faculty and engendered delusions, making them unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Among the famous authors who promulgated this explanation was the Dutch physician Johan Wier (or Johann Weyer). In De praestigiis daemonum (On the Deceits of the Demons, published in 1563 and in an expanded redaction in 1583) he claimed that melancholy is an illness afflicting mainly women in their dotage, who are naturally prone to the devil’s power to corrupt their imagination and implant “certain specious appearances into the appropriate organs, just as if they were occurring truly and externally; and he does this not only when people sleep but also when they are awake.”20 Wier’s theories heavily drew on those of the Italian physician Girolamo Cardano, who had established a direct link between witches’ melancholy and delusions. In De rerum varietate (Concerning the Variety of Things) of 1557 he asserts that witches “see and hear some things, and the cause of this is to be assigned to black bile.”21 Cardano cautions the physician to concern 19 According to Giglioli, “Unpublished Paintings,” 290, Solimena’s melancholic Circe meditates over her next vicious scheme. Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 112–13, argues that Circe is in a contemplative mood after Ulysses’s departure. Percy, “Magic and Melancholy,” 7–8, observes that Circe “serenely contemplates the results of having changed Ulysses’ men to beasts,” yet “Castiglione probably drew on a specif ic tradition for the association of magic and melancholy, one which it is not possible to identify here with any precision.” Klinkhammer, “Gedächtniskunst und magische Kreise,” 115–17, argues that Castiglione’s etching represents Circe as the sun’s daughter, an identity that evokes Giordano Bruno’s description of Circe as the truth teller in his Cantus Circaeus (The Incantation of Circe). The solar aura surrounding her and her melancholy refer to the control of Saturn. The armor on the ground belongs to soldiers who were known as the “children of the Sun,” and the deer and the goat are solar animals. 20 Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 181. On melancholic witches, see Anglo, “Melancholia and Witchcraft”; Midelfort, A History of Madness, 182–227; Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 141–43; and Merback, Perfection’s Therapy, 130–36. 21 Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, 2:446–47. Baxter, “Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum,” 68, claims that “Weyer does not get much further than a blanket use of Cardano’s diagnosis of melancholia.” See also Clark, Thinking with Demons, 221, 238. Although Cardano urged mercy for the alleged witches and a dismissal of their confessions, he did not exculpate them from the dangerous folly generated by their melancholy and thus advised judges to imprison them for a lengthy time in order to allow their humor to disperse. Lest they not recover their senses, they should be justly condemned to death. See Brann, The Debate Over the Origin of Genius, 342–44.

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himself only with the physiological—not the demonic—cause of melancholy, though he does not rule out the latter option.22 Their melancholy, he states, is detectible simply by looking at them, as they “show in their faces black bile and melancholy.”23 Indeed, the melancholy of Circe and her kind in the images under discussion is marked by an external sign, namely, the cheek-on-hand posture. Only contingent on a diagnosis of melancholy was it clear to the viewer that Circe’s supernatural power and engendered transformations are but the product of her troubled imagination.24 A prime reason for singling out Circe as a delusional melancholic to rob her of her vaunted supernatural abilities was the kind of sorcery she wielded. Belief in the ability to transform men into beasts was deemed preposterous and heretical. Most authors, even those committed to the veracity of witchcraft, repudiated the claims to transformation as deceptive illusions.25 Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum (1486), apparently revived interest in these matters with its first publication in Italy in 1574—a year before Allori executed his fresco cycle—and a second impression in 1576 (both in Latin). Corroborating St. Augustine, Kramer deems Circe’s enchantment a delusion: “In this case [i.e., the companions of Ulysses were turned into wild beasts] certainly it was merely an appearance that deceived the eyes, so that the form of a beast was brought forth from the repository of pictures (the memory) to the force of imagination.”26 Other demonologists explicitly averred that the magic of transformation is a delusion stirred by melancholy. Zaccaria Visconti stresses in his handbook for exorcists Complementum artis exorcisticae (Complement to the Art of Exorcism, Venice, 1600) that the belief that a demon “sometimes transmutes whole bodies or their separate members into bestial forms” is actually caused by imaginary phantasms implanted by the devil through the melancholy humor that “obscures the mind, intellect, and memory, and disturbs the reason and judgment.”27 Strozzi Cicogna contends in Del palagio degl’incanti (Palace of Enchantments, Vicenza, 22 The question as to whether delusions were implanted in melancholic minds by devils or were generated by natural causes had continued by such witchcraft theorists as Jean Bodin (1580) and Reginald Scot (1584). On this debate, see Anglo, “Melancholia and Witchcraft.” 23 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 240. 24 Maxime Préaud, “De Melencolia D.,” 129, was the first to briefly associate Castiglione’s etching of Circe with witchcraft discourses on melancholy. 25 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 192. 26 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 332 (2.1.8), following Augustine’s claim that Circe’s magic is an illusion created by demons (The City of God 18.17–18). This line of argument about Circe’s magic is reiterated in Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 337–42 (4.22). By contrast, Bartolommeo Spina wrote in Quaestio de strigibus (Venice, 1523) that all witchcraft is credible, even the least credible magic of the transformation by Circe, because “to deny it is to assume to be wiser than Augustine and the holy doctors of the Church”; Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, 1:389. 27 Brann, The Debate Over the Origin of Genius, 208–9.

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1605) that transformations of men into animals “are not accomplished in real and essential fact but by a diabolical delusion.” Demons produce these phantasms in the forms of “wolves, dogs, cats, monkeys, owls, crows, and other like animals” through the material aid of melancholy humor.28 The power to transform men into beasts rivalled God’s creation and thus belief in its possibility amounted to heresy, even if mitigated by delusiveness. Condemnation of heresy is encapsulated in the extremely influential Canon Episcopi (ca. 906), a decree of Church law that was included in Gratian’s Decretum, the twelfth-century collection of ecclesiastical law. It constrained the fifteenth-century conviction that witches’ covens taking flight to the sabbath: “Whoever therefore believes … that any creature can be changed or transformed to better or to worse or be transformed into another species or likeness, except by the creator himself … is beyond doubt an infidel and worse than a pagan.”29 Avoidance of heresy may explain the pains artists often took to demystify Circe’s magic. To recapitulate thus far, the representation of a melancholic Circe results from a confluence of two currents of belief: the explanation of witches in terms of delusionary melancholia, and the looming specter of heresy putting a deflationary pressure on representations of Circean magic. Now we turn to see how the animals and devices surrounding Circe complement the implications of her melancholy. The zoological diversity presented by Castiglione beyond the animals mentioned in the classical accounts appears to be propelled by illustrations of the myth in early sixteenth-century Italian editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and paintings of Flemish artists who visited Genoa in the f irst decades of the seventeenth century. The rendering of the transformed men in their f inal form as animals rather than amidst a physical process of the transformation may aim to diminish the corporeality of that magic. As Walter Stephens explains, when transformation is captured in progress, by showing a representation of simultaneously differing conditions, the image reinforces its reality as an occurrence that takes place in real time and space.30 From another dimension, Niccolò Machiavelli, Giovanni Battista Gelli, and Natale Conti, among other Renaissance commentators on the myth, mitigated the reality of this magic by allegorizing the animals as emblems of vices and lending them with physiognomic theories about the nature of personhood and personal identity (men were transformed to the animal echoing their 28 Brann, The Debate Over the Origin of Genius, 211–12. 29 Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 62–63. This harsh denunciation was reiterated frequently by demonologists such as Kramer; the Lombard inquisitor Bernardo Rategno da Como (De strigiis, 1505–10), in Abbiati, Agnoletto, and Lazzati, La Stregoneria, 206; and Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 341 (4.22). 30 Stephens, Demon Lovers, 296. A process of transformation is seen in one of Castiglione’s paintings with a non-melancholic Circe; Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe,” fig. 681.

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human character or sin).31 The wide variety of animals invites viewers to indulge in a game of allegory. Castiglione associated his melancholic Circes with vanitas symbolism. Intellectual, artistic, and military items signifying the transience and vanity of human endeavors lie dispersed amidst crumbling masonry choked with foliage. Bertina Suida Manning has drawn the melancholic Circe into the message of vanitas. Castiglione’s Circe “has become pensive and no longer dominates her realm … her glances seem to wander uneasily to what she has wrought: the remains of human glory, the armor, the animals … the old tattered books, scrolls and urn.”32 Even sorcery cannot escape the passing of time: “The very attraction to the theme of sorcery, namely, the idea of overcoming the limitations of earthly existence, is finally discounted by Castiglione, whose Circe turned Vanitas-Melancholia sadly accepts these limitations.”33 As the paintings of Allori and Pseudo-Caroselli indicate, Circe’s melancholy was evolved separately from the vanitas topos. Some items in Castiglione’s works are explicable by the Homeric myth prior to the intercession of vanitas and melancholia artificalis; thus, the scattered armors are licensed as belonging to the transformed men; the urns and goblets contain magic potion; the books and scrolls offer occult knowledge.34 The melancholic Circe, rather than imagining her contemplating the transience of life, can be perceived as a vanitas embodiment in herself. Vanitas, literally “emptiness,” refers to her hollow hallucinations and vain magical power. Symbolically, the sideways empty urn whose mouth is directed at the melancholic Circe’s head in the painting at Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, alludes to her delusional mind. Castiglione seems to play with the various signif ications of melancholy. In eliminating superfluous human figures and eschewing the mid-metamorphosis stage in the narrative, he suspends the unfolding of the myth and relates Circe to 31 Niccolò Machiavelli, in L’asino (1517), combines the myth of Circe and Apuleius’s Golden Ass. He matches animals to human characteristics: lions were previously magnanimous and noble men, goats were irresponsible men, and so on. Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others, 765–66 (6.52–103). In his influential Mythologiae, published in Venice in 1567, the Italian mythographer Natale Conti (Natalis Comes) classifies the transformed men according to the nature of their crimes: “The libidinous becoming pigs, the irascible lions or bears, and the rest according to their misdeeds.” Conti, Mythologies, 323 (6.6). 32 Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe,” 697. 33 Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe,” 700. On Vanitas and Melancholy, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 387–91. 34 In the painting of a melancholic Circe in Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, the statue of double-headed Janus, symbol of the first month of the year, looking at both the past and the future, personifies the sequence of metamorphosis. Klinkhammer, “Gedächtniskunst und magische Kreise,” 115, identifies inscriptions from Cornelius Agrippa’s magic tract in the book lying open on the ground before Circe in Castiglione’s etching. Some of these items appear in his philosophical prints: Bellini, The Illustrated Bartsch, cat. nos. 21, 24, 25, 27.

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Figure 58. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Melancholia, ca. 1645–46, etching, 21.6 × 11.2 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 59. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Vanitas/Melancholia, pen and brown ink and wash on buff paper, 22.2 × 34.3 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

personifications of Melancholy. The female Melancholy in Castiglione’s etching, encapsulated in the title “Ubi inletabilitas, ibi virtus” (Where There is Grief, There is Virtue), is seated in contemplation over a skull and musical score, cognizing the futility of endeavor given the transience of life (fig. 58).35 The decay of life is further elaborated through the depiction of ruins smothered in foliage, around which lie scattered sundry insignia of artistic and intellectual endeavor. The virtuous Melancholy forms the antithesis of Circe’s vicious melancholy: the former refers to the male creative melancholy personified by female figures, and the latter, to the female pathological melancholy.36 In a rather enigmatic drawing (fig. 59), Castiglione combines these two meanings of melancholy, as a bearer of contemplation and as a source of delusions. A female melancholic, sitting in contemplation over a skull, surrounded by common tropes indicating Melancholy (a dog, a book, a globe), receives a delegation of unkempt demons. The interpretation of her stance 35 Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 390; and Macioce, “Melanconia e pittura nel Seicento.” 36 Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia, 12, 14; and Jackson, Melancholia and Depression, 100. For Cardano’s estimation of the creative, inspirational melancholy of poets, prophets, and sibyls, see Brann, The Debate Over the Origin of Genius, 340. Aristotle (Problems, 2:163) explains that black bile’s high temperature influences the imagination of inspired people, including sibyls. See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 24; Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia, 103.

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is ambiguous; the demonic trio may be the cause of her melancholia or they may be a figment emanating from her afflicted mind.37 Circe’s melancholy def ies the Homeric narrative insofar as it signif ies the transformed animals as utter fiction. In the absence of any visual convention for demarcating indirect representations of hallucinatory extra-reality from reality, her melancholy becomes the sole manifest signpost for the existence of both reality and illusion in the scene.38 In effect, blurring the distinction between ontological realms is faithful to the phenomenology of the sorceress, to whom many magical elements are presented as real (Spada’s drawing discussed in chapter 1 is another example). The problems besetting the viewer who has to discriminate between illusion and reality in the artwork are devolved from Circe’s own confusion of subjective phantasms with objective reality. The attempt to capture Circe’s experience as faithfully as possible has the inevitable consequence of impairing its immediate intelligibility. In signaling the defective perceptual and cognitive faculties of the melancholic witch, the artist equally calls into question the epistemic standing of the viewer. Apart from enacting a refutation of magic, the image of a melancholic witch might have hinted at a subtle similarity drawing together magician and artist as artificers of fictional worlds. In Allori’s fresco the apparitional animals are consolidated into reality. The visual and psychological immediacy of the two lions, achieved by their naturalistic appearance and frontal presentation, fixedly staring out of the frame, intensify the impression of a hallucinatory existence.39 The lions’ penetrating stare acknowledges the viewer’s presence and self-reflexively, their own. Yet, in opposition, Circe’s melancholy insists on the lions’ nonexistence. The artist elaborates their existence as a representational illusion to deceive the viewer by enhancing the ambit of Circe’s melancholic delusions. Ultimately, Allori demonstrates the deceptive power of his art. Circe is the first to fall headlong into the enchantment prepared for her by the artist; observe her bewildered gaze as she ponders the existence of the animals at her feet. The viewer is next in line; the lion that captivates the viewer’s gaze is the correlate of the wolf that holds Circe’s own in rapt absorption. Both are elements in a finely sprung visual trap. 37 For this drawing, see Blunt, “The Drawings of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione,” 168; Percy, “Magic and Melancholy,” 6; and Roberts, Italian Master Drawings, 112. 38 Cranach’s Melancholia introduces a significant demarcation between a grotesque aerial space dedicated to a coven of witches in full flight and a serene interior with winged personification of Melancholia and gamboling babes by viewing the former through the liminal perspective of a large window, marking the transition from one realm to another. See Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 192–93. For the window as delineating a framed space representing the dream of a saint or the artist’s imagination, see Ringbom, “Some Pictorial Conventions,” 61; and Summers, “Form and Gender,” 386–88. 39 Once again, the Palazzo Vecchio decoration supplied a visual model. Allori copied the left lion from the tapestry Justice Rescuing Innocence, designed by Allori’s master, Agnolo Bronzino, for Cosimo I de’ Medici; Tal, “Disbelieving in Witchcraft,” 62, and fig. 5.

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Preposterous Transformations A rich vein of humor concerning Circe’s magic lies in the way in which metamorphosis and hybrid commingle and coalesce with one another. Hybridity and metamorphosis can be viewed as two liminal conditions of divided nature: the hybrid is an inherently stable, spatially extended form, whereas metamorphosis is temporal and is thus an essentially dynamic and transient phenomenon. Therefore, the synchronicity of the image as a still or stop-motion, presenting the whole material at once, makes it ideal for representations of hybrids, whereas the diachronicity of a text, unfolding the material in a narrative sequence ordered logically as well as chronologically, naturally lends itself to the depiction of metamorphoses. Some degree of confusion may arise from a synchronic representation of diachronicity, that is, from an image of metamorphosis that captures the transition from one entity to another and may thus be mistaken as a hybrid. 40 The visual ambiguity created by picturing the intermediate stages of metamorphosis as yielding a human-animal hybrid was resolved by Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630) in an etching of Circe Transforming Ulysses’s Men into Swine made for the 1606 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (fig. 60). Tempesta sequentially arranged three of Circe’s victims in several stages of transformation into boar shape (before, during, and after), drawing the viewer into an apprehension of a process gradually unfolding from the initial to the concluding phase as if in accordance with a chronologically ordered narration. 41 In so doing, he not only dispelled any possible misapprehension of the boar-headed figure as constituting a hybrid, but also aligned his image with the diachronicity of the text that accompanies it, without however compromising the scene’s spatial and temporal unity. This takes on a particular significance when one considers Tempesta’s etching in conjunction with the tradition of paragone, the Renaissance debate about the relative merits of painting and poetry. In evoking a progressive metamorphosis, Tempesta proved the artist’s power to transform a sequential textual narrative into a single image. Images of Circe casting men into beasts also emerge as a test case not so much for reconciling the visual ambiguity between metamorphosis and hybrid as for emphasizing, and even satirizing, the emerging fit between the two human-animal states as they complement and collide with each other. This visual ambiguity captivated two Bolognese painters: Pellegrino Tibaldi and Annibale Carracci. They orchestrated farcical scenes of Circe casting men into beasts by entertaining the metamorphic hybrid appearance. 40 Sharrock, “Representing Metamorphosis,” 106–8; and Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, 30. 41 Tempesta reorganized his direct model, Virgil Solis’s illustration for the 1563 Frankfurt edition of Ovid (Zika, “Images of Circe,” fig. 10).

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Figure 60. Antonio Tempesta, Circe Transforming Ulysses’s Men into Swine, etching, 10.5 × 11.5 cm., in Metamorphoseon Ovidianarum, Amsterdam, 1606, 135. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527–96) frescoed Circe and Ulysses among other adventures from the Odyssey on a vaulted ceiling in Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, in 1550–51 (figs. 61 and 62). Consistent with the Homeric text, he displayed the moment Ulysses pretends to attack Circe after drinking her poisonous drug, yet not before Mercury, who is glimpsed fleeing the scene, has provided him with the antidote. Circe, empty bowl in hand, raises her arm to express surprise at his unexpected immunization against her magic. According to the myth, at that precise moment, recognizing him as Ulysses, Circe propositions him—in the painting, flashing her bare breasts to raise the heat. This dramatic encounter transpires just as four of Ulysses’s companions, asprawl at their feet on the marble floor, twist and gesticulate in a hot fury as they undergo the stages of transformation from man to beast. Ulysses all but tramples on two of his entangled companions, entwining themselves about his heels: a lion-headed figure still wearing vestigial human clothes in carmine hues and a figure whose head is an incomplete transposition from human to lupine, preserving the human brow yet extending into a bewhiskered snout and overtopped by animal ears.

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Figure 61. Pellegrino Tibaldi, Circe and Ulysses, 1550–51, fresco. Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images.

Figure 62. Pellegrino Tibaldi, The Odyssey ceiling, 1550–51, fresco. Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna. Photo: Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman Images.

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The rightmost figure in the foreground is caught in an earlier, more conservative phase of transformation: viewers overlooking the changes in his right hand might yet recognize his emergent bestiality from his animallike nakedness and frenzied contortions. He is visually counterbalanced by an arresting metamorphosis that emphatically deviates from the Odyssey or any post-Homeric account of the myth: a male figure whose human upper body seems to have birthed a tricephalous dragon. Now, Paul Barolsky and Morten Steen Hansen have convincingly argued that Tibaldi imparted a farcical, mock-heroic tone to the Homeric narrative, 42 yet the contribution of the scene in Circe and Ulysses to Tibaldi’s comic manner has been left unaddressed hitherto. The ensuing analysis explains how Tibaldi conveyed a witty commentary on the Homeric myth by means of representing his figures (especially the tricephalous dragon-man hybrid) in the throes of transformation. The frescoed vault attests to Tibaldi’s admiration of Michelangelo by way of developing “a pictorial poetics centered on the imitation of the old artist.”43 The four mutating men ought to be examined from this perspective. To begin with, they enter into a lively visual dialogue with some f igures modeled by Tibaldi after Michelangelo’s works. In their Michelangelesque athletic nudity, dynamic posturing, and number, they echo the four giant nudes in the corners of the vault, choreographed as variants of Michelangelo’s ignudi in the Sistine Chapel.44 Further, their recumbent position and unrestrained gestures effect a visual connection with the Cyclops Polyphemus at the center of the ceiling—a hypermuscular version of Adam in the Sistine Creation of Man.45 Complementing the figural quotes and bodily imitations of Michelangelo’s works across the vault, the four transforming men themselves allude to a work by the master. Their staging in two parallel sets of pairs calls to mind the four personifications of the times of day in the Medici Chapel in Florence (fig. 63). Similar to the way he adapted the Sistine ignudi, Tibaldi quickened Michelangelo’s reclining nudes of Dawn, Dusk, Day, and Night by dint of exuberant movements and torsions, clothing one figure, rolling another on its stomach, and depicting yet another from behind. 46 Tibaldi juxtaposed frontal and dorsal views of the transforming men in the foreground as if to cue his inspiration from figures 42 Barolsky, Infinite Jest, 195; and Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 110. 43 Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 4. 44 Barolsky, Infinite Jest, 195; and Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 117–18. 45 Their metamorphosis was one of the calamities that struck Ulysses and his crew as punishment meted out by Poseidon, Polyphemus’s father, who was enraged by Ulysses’s blinding of the Cyclops. The visual parallelism forges a connection between the crime and its punishment. 46 In addition to a possible trip to Florence, Tibaldi visited Rome between 1547 and 1550, where he must have seen how the Medici Chapel personifications were imitated by Daniele da Volterra, Giorgio Vasari, and Guglielmo della Porta in their works at the Vatican Palace. For these works, see Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 66–74.

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Figure 63. Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici with Day and Night, 1524–34, marble. New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence. Photo © Nicolò Orsi Battaglini / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 64. Tibaldi, Circe and Ulysses, detail.

“in the round.” His rough-hewn Ulysses, flanked by his two comrades, echoes and revivifies the solemn and inactive armed effigies of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, each sitting in a niche above their respective tombs on which two personifications are reclining. Tibaldi was also alluding to the concept of the destructive power of time, expressed by the four marble nudes, who mourn over the death of the two Medici dukes. With a due pinch of irony, he epitomized the theme of temporality by turning mourners into victims caught in the transitional and ephemeral states of metamorphosis. Hybridity and metamorphosis, the impossible marvels that, as Carolyn Walker Bynum states, “shake our confidence in the structure of reality,”47 were wittily molded by Tibaldi in the guise of the four periods of the day, the very emblems of the well-regulated natural world. To return to Tibaldi’s figure, half-transformed from man into a snarling, tricephalic dragon (fig. 64), it is noteworthy that among the zoomorphic bestiary (both real and imaginary) that artists depicted along with or instead of the swine, lions, and wolves into which Ulysses’s companions stood to be transformed according to classical literature, this creature is exceedingly grotesque. 48 Tibaldi consolidated the state of metamorphosis yielding the unanticipated result of the monster, a confluence that stirs up the visual and conceptual interrelatedness of hybridity and metamorphosis. The hybrid as product of metamorphosis had in fact been implied in the Odyssey. The bewitched wolves and lions that Ulysses’s sailors encounter during 47 Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, 31. 48 Examples of fanciful creatures include a long-necked monster in the illustration in Ovid’s Lyon edition of 1518 (Zika, “Images of Circe,” fig. 9), a merman in a majolica dish of ca. 1550 in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Poole, Italian Maiolica, 285–86, cat. no. 358), and a chiaroscuro woodcut after Parmigianino (Zika, “Images of Circe,” fig. 12), which Lorandi, Il Mito di Ulisse, 455, proposes as Tibaldi’s source for the two serpents next to Circe.

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their exploration of Circe’s island are described as “terrible monsters” (10.219) and are a cause for consternation and fright. They are monsters not by reason of their outer appearance or their nature as men transformed into beasts—only later in the story does Eurilochus interpret them as such—but because in their unnatural tameness they violate the boundaries between the wild and the domesticated.49 The hybridity of the transformed men is more forcefully articulated by Apollonius Rhodius. In Argonautica, which includes his version of several of Ulysses’s adventures, Circe is accompanied by a herd of beasts “not resembling the beasts of the wild, nor yet like men in body, but with a medley of limbs” (4.677).50 A reader attuned to the Homeric story would recognize their hybrid states as metamorphoses frozen in time from men to animals. Apollonius compares these hybrids to similar creatures that lived in the primordial world before nature would organize them into distinct species.51 The allusion of Tibaldi’s dragon-man to Apollonius’s passage was likely to appeal to those cultured viewers who were conversant with the references to post-Homeric accounts in Tibaldi’s Odyssey scenes.52 By conceiving the dragon-man, Tibaldi entertained the possibility that monstrosity does not represent a fleeting phase but endures well after the transformation is affected. The monstrosity of the dragon-man transcends his external appearance to encompass his psyche as well. Tibaldi deftly exploited the tricephalic form to highlight another aspect of heterogeneity—the array of emotional reactions prompted by the monster’s dire fate. Each of the dragon heads expresses a different passion: the beetle-browed, roaring head at the front burns with belligerence, baring its fangs in a rictus of fury; the second head draped across the floor projects supine despondency; the third head, rearing in profile at the back, rolls one inconceivably anguished eye at the audience in a bathetic drop of mood. The transmission of multiple emotions through a single central figure (albeit a cloven-headed one) is a witty and profound way to manifest hybridity. Perhaps more enjoyably still, the dragon-man fantastically projects his foremost head out of the painting onto the real space below and emits a menacing roar at the beholder. This burst of intense emotions evinces the “mind-body” duality, stressed in the Odyssey (10.239–240), to the effect that men maintain their rationality (and hence the continuity of their inner selves) after being transformed. The spectator may wonder whether the dragon’s reactive emotions manifest traces of his underlying human character, aspects of his new bestial identity, or an admixture of both. That Tibaldi permitted one of Circe’s victims to project his emotions to the attentive observer is at variance with the Homeric text, which glosses over the 49 Yarnall, Transformations of Circe, 11. 50 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 339-41. 51 Thumiger, “Metamorphosis,” 400–401. 52 Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 111–16.

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reaction of Circe’s victims to their new embodied condition. The amusing effect that Tibaldi achieved by granting a voice of sorts to the dragon-man hybrid recalls a contemporary work that the artist and his erudite audience may plausibly have been acquainted with: Giovanni Battista Gelli’s Circe of 1548. Inspired by Plutarch’s Beasts Are Rational, it consists of ten comic dialogues, in which Ulysses attempts to persuade each animal to resume its human form, and the animal in return submits its reasons against the proposed reversal. The dragon-man beckons the beholder into the image, inviting him to experience the myth through the eyes of the transformed men rather than those of the two protagonists. However, the formidable, glowering, snarling head thrust at the viewer with a “from-under” stare is not exactly a plea for empathy. How can its fell menace be understood? Here, the question should be referred to the artist’s objective. Tibaldi cast the dragon-man as a mediatory figure interposing between the spectator and the painting and as a prescribed pictorial device meant to engage the viewers in the narrative and demonstrate prescriptively the emotion one ought to feel while looking at the scene. Leon Battista Alberti explains in De pictura: It seems opportune then that in the historia there is someone who informs the spectators of the things that unfold; or invites with the hand to show; or threatens with severe face and turbid eyes not to approach there, as if he wishes that a similar story remains secret; or indicates a danger or another [attribute] over there to observe; or invites you with his own gestures to laugh together or cry in company.53

Tibaldi, however, satirized the use of this device inasmuch as he enlisted to it a creature capable of projecting a gamut of contrasting emotions to the rapt perplexity and amusement of the audience. If Alberti, endorsing Horace and Cicero, argued that viewers would likely empathize with the painted figures—“we cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh, we grieve with those who suffer”54—Tibaldi brings his beholders face to face with a nominally threatening monster that elicits no more than a knowing smile. In externals, the dragon-man draws the beholder’s attention to the leitmotif of the grotesque face, as it prominently appears in the pictorial assemblage. Circe and Ulysses are surrounded by sundry faces: the lion’s head bearing an all too human look of goggle-eyed astonishment, the half-man, half-wolf composite head caught on the very cusp of transformation, and the leonine head decorating Ulysses’s cuirass. Moreover, Circe’s venomous magic is symbolized by the two serpents whose 53 Alberti, On Painting, 63 (2.42). 54 Alberti, On Painting, 61 (2.41).

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hissing, tongue-lashing threshing about is replicated by the roaring tricephalic dragon-man (fig. 64). Beyond the perimeters of this scene, eight satyr masks of stucco decorate the corners of the central painting of Blinding of Polyphemus (fig. 62). These grotesque masks superadded to the frame—another motif appropriated from the Medici Chapel—underscore the illusion, deception, self-conscious theatricality, and hollowness of appearance that characterize the fresco scenes, predominantly Ulysses and Circe.55 The satyrs’ diverse expressions—grimacing, howling, sticking out their tongues, and so on—abide by the principle of varietà, which, according to art theorists, demonstrates artistic virtuosity and stimulates aesthetic pleasure. In Tibaldi’s vaulted fresco, the principle of variety finds evidence also in the postures and viewpoints of his ignudi and transformed men.56 The dragon-man, with his manifold facial expressions, is the culmination of this concept. In its integrity, the image—through its instantiation of a variety of artistic and literary ideas—is particularly apt as an introduction to Tibaldi’s inventive achievements and ability to excite his audience to a pleasurable encounter with the artwork. Five decades later, another Bolognese artist, probably Annibale Carracci (1560– 1609), offered his own comic version of the Circe myth in a drawing dated around 1600 and now at the Windsor Castle (fig. 65).57 The scene compresses two consecutive moments in the narrative: Circe, in the first plane, is at work transforming men into beasts, while Ulysses, freshly arrived at her palace, is conversing with his boar- and wolf-headed comrades figuring in the background.58 Carracci, celebrated for developing the genre of caricatures, submitted an ingeniously humorous interpretation of her magic. Circe is affixing a bestial head, gripped by its sinuously long neck, to a decapitated torso; hoisting up its own severed human head by the roots of its hair, the kneeling torso appears to collude in the remaking of its body, by disposing of its own accord of this unnecessary human vestige. The severed heads of a lion, a boar, and a wolf are strewn at her feet, ready to be grafted onto other beheaded victims. Circe’s well-established reputation as a lascivious temptress is made explicit.59 The fetching 55 Grotesque masks also decorate a second fresco ceiling of the Odyssey made by Tibaldi to decorate another room in the Palazzo Poggi. On the abundance of painted and sculpted satyr masks in Tibaldi’s two fresco cycles, with a reference to the numerous masks in the Medici Chapel, see Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 116, 180n. 62. 56 On varietà in respect to Michelangelo’s ignudi, see Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art, 233–36. 57 Wittkower, The Drawings of the Carracci, 151–52, cat. no. 380. Weston-Lewis, “Francesco Albani ‘Disegnatore,’” 329–30n. 51, attributes this drawing to Annibale’s cousin, Ludovico Carracci. 58 Giovanni Pietro Bellori, in his 1672 biography of artists, praises Annibale’s treatment of the Circe story in the Camerino of Palazzo Farnese, Rome, ca. 1595–97, for his clever departure from literary sources in order “to compress into a single action and a single time what a poet in words can easily portray in several episodes and various actions.” Translation is from Weston-Lewis, “Francesco Albani ‘Disegnatore,’” 310. 59 For example, Horace (Epistles 1.2.23–26) condemns Circe as “a whorish mistress” (domina meretrice), and Circe is the paradigmatic prostitute of Andrea Alciato’s emblem “Beware of Whores” (Cavendum à

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Figure 65. Annibale Carracci (attr.), Circe Transforming Men into Beasts, ca. 1600, pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, over red chalk, on cream paper, 30 × 36.2 cm. Windsor Castle. Photo: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023.

figure, all rippling ringlets and bare-breasted abandon, throws her leg obliquely so that it eloquently lolls about crosswise in the vicinity of her victim’s groin and thighs. The erotic motif of the leg slung across, a familiar trope whose denotation ranges from titillation to copulation, registers Circe as a perilous seductress who uses magic to deprive men of their manhood no less than of their humanity.60 Remarkably, Circe is depicted bereft of the usual signifiers, namely, her bowl of magical potion, wand, or any other stage props drawn from the symbolic repository meretricibus) in his Emblemata, 84 (F2v). For further references, see Yarnall, Transformations of Circe, 98–107; Roberts, “The Descendants of Circe,” 199–202; Framba, “Alcune osservazioni,” 215–18; and Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 269–70. 60 The “slung leg” motif was popularized by sixteenth-century erotic prints of mythological couples; Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 147–48. It appears in Annibale Carracci’s Venus and Anchises and Omphale and Hercules frescoed on the gallery ceiling of Palazzo Farnese, Rome, in 1597–1602. Circe’s position recalls the warning Hermes gave Ulysses: “When she [Circe] has you stripped she may deprive you of your courage and your manhood”; Homer, Odyssey, 381 (10.300–301).

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of magic. In fact, this Circe does not practice sorcery. Her transformative powers give place to a ghastly literal operation of engrafting bestial heads onto decapitated human frames. The human-animal hybrid used to signal the transitory phase of metamorphosis institutes here a permanent deformation. Carracci satirized the visual conflation of hybridity and metamorphosis by rendering magical transformation as the literal construction of a hybrid from a miscellany of body parts. The final stage of this process is the direct grafting of an animal head onto a human carcass.61 Carracci’s choice of showing Circe fixing an animal head on a human carcass was canny. Since the head is the seat of reason and the supreme housing of all that most effectively identifies a person, its replacement indicates the loss of both faculty and self. The merits of this configuration that made it the choice representation of metamorphoses in midstream are negotiated in the drawing. First, Circe’s insouciant interchanging of craniums highlights the visible detachment of the head from the body, a detachment that facilitates a visual assimilation of the uppermost extremity of one species within the corporeal frame of another. And second, the severed heads of identifiable animals bestrewing the ground highlight the fact that the head, more than any other part of the body, allows for a swift identification of an animal specimen. An apt analysis must not gloss over the evident fact that the construction of hybrids necessitates another activity, one in which Circe herself must have been engaged: that of beheading men and animals. As Jessica Hughes points out, “The language used to describe … hybrids highlights the act of joining and the creation of new composite bodies, while failing to acknowledge the act of deconstruction that this process logically entails.”62 The cluster of severed heads dwelling at Circe’s feet robustly advertises this brutal intermediary of killing and dissecting. The literalizing of the magic of conceiving hybrids in terms of the active hacking and joinery of body parts transposes us from the sorceress’s palace to the artist’s studio. Leonardo da Vinci instructed artists to compose hybrids from the naturalistic parts of animals: “If you wish to make an animal, imagined by you, appear natural, let us say a dragon, take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, 61 For a humanist viewer, the presentation of Circe as the maker of hybrids rather than of transformations alludes to a well-known commentary on Circe’s myth, originally articulated in Natale Conti’s important Mythologiae (1567). Conti (Mythologies, 321) explains that Circe’s name derives from miscendo, meaning “what must be mixed,” an inaccurate Latin translation of the Greek κιρνάω (kirnao), meaning “to mix wine with water”; Yarnall, Transformations of Circe, 108. According to Conti, Circe, as the daughter of Helios (the god of the Sun) and Perse (Oceanus’s daughter), is herself a genetic mixture of the divine principles of heat and water. Circe is thus the medium through which these two antagonistic elements are admixed to engender new forms and beings. It is implied that the heredity of Circe as a mixture is far closer to hybridization than to metamorphosis. Accordingly, Carracci shows her not transforming but, rather, bringing into being new forms by mixing preexisting elements. 62 Hughes, “Dissecting the Classical Hybrid,” 104–5.

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the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, the neck of a water-tortoise.”63 Leonardo put his theory into practice, when, according to Giorgio Vasari, he decided to paint a Medusa-like monster on a shield. For that purpose, he brought to his room “crawling reptiles, green lizards, crickets, snakes, butterflies, locusts, bats, and other strange species of this kind” and formed out of this living assortment “a most horrible and frightening monster with poisonous breath that set the air on fire.”64 As Claudia Swan has observed, Vasari described the production of this monster without mentioning the act of painting, as if Leonardo were creating an actual chimera.65 While Leonardo creates an artistic hybrid out of actual animals, Circe, who has the choice of many species of heads littered about at her feet, does not choose a real animal head but an inordinately long-necked monster head. Her startling selection of material throws into relief the artist’s own intervention in this process. Circe assembles an actual hybrid by using a hybrid head that was created by Carracci.66 From this analysis it becomes clear that Carracci infused the Circean myth with a self-referential comment. In this drawing, he articulated what metamorphosis meant for an artist from a practical perspective: the creative task of devising a hybrid. Finally, to enhance the work’s overarching humorous effect, Carracci embedded two youthful figures, aligned on a vertical axis at the center of the composition. A small girl, possibly one of Circe’s maids, peeks shyly from behind a curtain draped in the background. As a possible voyeur, she highlights the erotically charged space, and as an eyewitness to the proceedings, she amusingly confirms the reality of the metamorphosis. The second figure is a winged putto shown in the act of demonstratively urinating on a tossed skull in the foreground; with the tip of his little dainty fingers, he gingerly hoists up the hem of his garment to protect it from his well-directed and evidently practiced jets of urine. A stock comic motif in Italian art, the putto pisciatore (peeing putto) was employed by Carracci to serve for more than a hackneyed formula.67 On an artistic level, the putto’s freely pissing on a severed head evokes the common use of the putto pisciatore in ceiling paintings and fountain centerpieces to provoke hilarity from the amused beholders who happen to notice the infant mischievously urinating on their heads.68 On a symbolical level, his arched backed, hip thrusting, and overtly masculine activity of urination stands in stark contrast to the transformed men’s spoliation of virility, 63 Da Vinci, The Literary Works, 1:292–93. 64 Vasari, Le vite, 4:21; Vasari, The Lives, 288. 65 Swan, “Counterfeit Chimeras,” 223. 66 The bestial head with an elongated neck bears resemblance to that of the hybrid in a chiaroscuro woodcut after Parmigianino; Zika, “Images of Circe,” fig. 12. 67 Barolsky, Infinite Jest, 161–65. 68 Simons, “Manliness,” 354–56; and Simons, The Sex of Men, 29–30.

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crudely emblematized in the pissing target—the decapitated (castrated) head.69 Brought into a relational dynamic, the pissing putto and the female peeping tom intensify the erotic ambiance of an upside-down world, whereby Circe is the ultra of the species of the femme fatale, inveigling and hacking to pieces at one fell swoop. Carracci’s lighthearted tone, his bare-breasted Circe, and the arrangement of the transformed men are evidence of his having drawn inspiration from Tibaldi, a fellow artist whom the Carracci family admired and imitated.70 Both versions of the Circean myth demand to be read as pictorial meditations on the tension between hybridity and metamorphosis. Tibaldi and Carracci devised a new conception of the hybrid as the outcome of metamorphosis as a means by which to ridicule the overlapping aspects of states that were held to be in conflict with one another. Carracci went a step further insofar as he rejected the premises of the process of transformation in favor of a literal and sensationalist manufacture of hybrids, enlisting Circe in the role of the paramount hybrid maker. In widening the grotesque boundaries of the Homeric myth, blending hybridity and metamorphosis, and blurring the distinction between the two, Carracci and Tibaldi demonstrated their mastery of fantasia (imagination) and ingegno (wit) as much as they cast serious doubt on the physical reality of magical transformations.71

Medea: Benefica or Malefica? To most modern audiences, Medea is the cruel sorceress who exacted a disproportionate revenge for her husband Jason’s betrayal by slaughtering her own children. There is no end to her mythological ruthlessness, which runs on and on according to its own unappeasable logic. In her orgiastic bloodthirst, she slays and dismembers her brother Absyrtus, burns alive her rival Creusa, attempts to poison her stepson Theseus, and succeeds in killing her uncle Perses. Thanks to the rich catalogue of her atrocities, in Renaissance moral literature the character of Medea was considered an ideal paradigm by which to demonstrate vices and immoral demeanor. In the fourteenth-century Italian treatise on virtues and vices, Fiore di virtù (Flower of 69 Patricia Simons remarks a similar contrast, between a pissing infant and a decapitated Holofernes, in Donatello’s statue of Judith and Holofernes (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence); Simons, “Manliness,” 353. 70 Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror, 10. Both scenes depict four men in the course of transformation, disposed in an analogous manner. Two of them accompany Ulysses (who sports a similar plumed helmet) in the second plane: one possesses an animal head and another has a transitional face ending in a snout. Two other men occupy the foreground: the one on the right has not yet undergone transformation, and the one on the left possesses a monstrous head. As Yarnall, Transformations of Circe, 119, points out, Annibale’s Ulysses and Circe, painted in the Camerino Farnese in 1595–97, quotes Tibaldi’s reclining man in the right foreground (with a modified swine’s head). 71 On ingegno, see Oosterhoff, Marcaida, and Marr, Ingenuity in the Making.

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Virtue), Medea exemplifies Crudeltà (Cruelty). In the 1491 Florentine edition of the treatise, this vice is illustrated by the figure of Medea rising, sword in hand, above her brother’s dismembered corpse; the looming basilisk nearby a classic exemplar of cruelty.72 Andrea Alciato, in his Emblemata (1550), selected a pictura of Medea slaying her children, accompanied by the emblem: “Others’ property should not be entrusted to a person who has once squandered his own.”73 Medea was also notorious for her sorcerous prowess. As a witch—“by far the cleverest of witches,” according to Giovanni Boccaccio—Medea was both beneficent and malefic.74 By means of magical brews she poisoned her enemies and aided her beloved in his heroic quests, arming Jason with a potion to slay the dragon that stood guard over the Golden Fleece. In early modern art, the most pertinent episode in Medea’s history was the sorcerous rejuvenation cast on her aged father-in-law, Aeson. This particular fable, among the many dramatic twists of fate besetting Medea, was almost invariably elected by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian artists as the subject matter of their paintings and will therefore form the central focus of the present discussion. Medea’s dichotomous nature receives poetical treatment in the seventh book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where her rejuvenation magic is recounted at length. In the first part of the poem, she is presented as a wife and mother, and then later transmuted into a witch; she is at first benign but becomes ultimately malignant by means of her magic. In light of Medea’s complex spectrum of roles and characteristics, Carole Newlands has concluded that “Ovid offers us not one canonical Medea but many perspectives on the central idea of the powerful woman.”75 The two Medea-figures, the benign and the malignant, are not altogether discrete individuals but stand partly assimilated, the one prefiguration moving with skimming latency within the other: “The wicked woman always lurked within the helper-maiden,” as Sarah Iles Johnston has observed.76 Is it possible to identify an analogous inconsistency in the character of Medea in the medium of art? The examination of Medea in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art has, surprisingly, remained underexplored in comparison with her representation in the arts and literature of early modern France and England, as well as in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art.77 We 72 The Florentine Fior di virtu of 1491, 36–37. 73 Alciato, Emblemata, 62 (D7v). 74 Boccaccio, Famous Women, 75 (17.1). 75 Newlands, “The Metamorphosis of Ovid’s Medea,” 207. 76 Iles Johnston, “Introduction,” 6. Two different aspects of Medea in Ovid’s earlier poem Heroides: in the letter of Hypsipyle to Jason, she accuses Medea of abusing her witchcraft and forcing Jason to love her, and in the letter of Medea to Jason, she is remorseful and defeated. 77 Wygant, Medea, Magic and Modernity; and Heavey, The Early Modern Medea. For Medea and Aeson in Italian art, see Bardon and Bardon, “Médée rajeunissant Éson”; Kepetzis, Medea in der Bildenden Kunst, 119–41; and Wygant, 37–42.

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shall come to see how Italian paintings of Aeson’s rejuvenation placed emphasis on Medea’s benevolent magic while on occasion invoking the many-layered ambiguity in her character. The magical rites conducted by Medea to rejuvenate Aeson received an extended treatment from Ovid (Met. 7.159–296). Medea accepts Jason’s request to return the years of youth to his father, delivering at the outset an extensive prayer to various deities, invoking their collective aid in the production and casting of her magic. In response to her appeal, a chariot driven by two winged dragons appears on the spot, ready to transport her to distant places to cull the necessary magical herbs. On her return, she erects two altars dedicated to Hecate and to Youth, whereupon she exsanguinates a black sheep by slashing its throat. Having completed these preliminary rites and ordered her attendants away, she turns her attention to Aeson himself. The old king is plunged into a deep sleep, his body stretched on a bed of leaves and purified by blood-smeared stakes lit at the altars. While the king is thus asleep and purged, a rich elixir of plants, pebbles, and animal parts bubbles away in a cauldron, a brew whose efficacy is validated when the wooden stick used to stir it instantaneously grows green and sprouts leaves. The magical rites culminate with the slashing of Aeson’s throat and the replacing of his old blood with Medea’s elixir. As expected, the circulation of magical fluids through Aeson’s veins restores his youth, at which point he wakes and marvels at his miraculous recapture of the prime of life. Rejuvenation is a type of transformation aptly wrought by magic, given that it “reverses the course of nature, and thereby constitutes, as sorcery often does, an overt violation of natural law,” as Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos remark.78 The point finds expression in Medea’s preliminary prayer to the deities, as she revels in her superhuman ability to overturn the world: she vaunts that with their help, she can turn the courses of rivers back to their sources, beckon the winds hither and thither, tear up rocks, move mountains and forests, and prevail upon the dead to rise from their tombs and amble about in the guise of ghosts. In the context of the poem, Aeson’s rejuvenation is remarkable by greatly differing in two key respects from the typical metamorphoses narrated by Ovid. First, its transformative effects are less dramatic, involving the filling-out of a decrepit body into its earlier fleshier frame, rather than a radical modification of kind, or in the very essence of the object transformed. Second, Medea’s exuberant, far-ranging rites, evolving as they do over a lengthy time frame and taking in distant geographies and deities, mark a manifest departure from the abrupt transformations that are more typical in 78 Gildenhard and Zissos, “The Transformations of Ovid’s Medea,” 102. On Medea’s power to reverse nature, see Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3; and Ovid, Heroides 6, both are quoted in Conti, Mythologies, 328. On her control of nature, see also Seneca, Medea 759, 768–69.

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the Ovidian poem. The moderate dramatic impact of Aeson’s rejuvenation may account for the paucity of early modern Italian paintings displaying the progressive transformation of his body and the popularity of representations concentrating on the magical process conducted by Medea.79 Circe and Medea are comparable in the attractiveness of their appearance and in pharmaceutical expertise, and they are known to be relatives: ancient genealogies alternately record Circe as Medea’s aunt (sister to Aeetes, Medea’s father), or as her sister from the same mother, the goddess of witchcraft Hecate.80 Differences in their magical processes and results, however, distinguish their presentation in Italian art. Circe’s transformation of men into animals is often shown, either as an act in progress or upon its completion, while the less radical restoration of Aeson’s youth is rarely depicted. In keeping with the ancient texts, Circe performs her magic with few resources, using only a bowl for potions and a wand, whereas Medea requires numerous accoutrements for her complex sorcery. The nocturnal setting in which Medea is sometimes depicted lends an air of mystery and intimidation to her scenes, contrasting with Circe’s daylight setting, which moderates the dreadful results of her spells and occasionally engenders a lighthearted tone. These differences may account, in part, for the paucity of joint representations of the two.81 A sympathetic presentation of a benevolent Medea is found in an oval panel by Girolamo Macchietti (1535–92), one of the paintings executed by a team of twenty-four artists under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari in 1570–72 to decorate the studiolo (private study) of the Florentine Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici in Palazzo Vecchio (fig. 66). Macchietti’s Medea Rejuvenating Aeson bears a striking resemblance to an illustration in Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or (Book of the Conquest of the Golden Fleece), a set of twenty-six prints engraved by René Boyvin after Léonard Thiry’s designs in 1563 (fig. 67). Macchietti directly extracted from Boyvin’s print the statues of Hecate and Youth erected by Medea on two altars. Following this print, he rendered the naked Medea at the edge of the composition, 79 In 1663 Pietro Bellotti painted Medea Rejuvenating Aeson (Pinacoteca dell’Accademia dei Concordi e dal Seminario Vescovile, Rovigo) after the instructions of his commissioner, Count Jan Humprecht Czernin, Habsburg envoy in Venice between 1660 and 1663. Aeson is represented in mid-metamorphosis, half of his body wrinkled and emaciated, showing a dark torso with a flabby arm, and the other half regaining youthful plumpness and strength, with bright and smooth flesh. For the count’s instructions, see Capitelli, “Dipingere la vecchiaia,” 188, and fig. 11. 80 For Circe as Medea’s aunt, see Homer, Odyssey 10.137–39; Hesiod, Theogony 956–62; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 590–91, and as her sister, see Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.45; Solinus 2.38. 81 Boschini, La carta del navegar pitoresco, 409, mentions a now-lost fresco painted by Benedetto Caliari (Veronese’s young brother) for the courtyard of Ca’ Mocenigo in Venice, consisting of Medea rejuvenating Aeson, Circe, Corisca (the deceitful nymph in Gian Battista Guarini’s Pastor fido), and some “Strigone” (witches). On Anton Maria Vassallo’s pendants of Circe and Medea, see below.

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Figure 66. Girolamo Macchietti, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, ca. 1570–72, oil on panel, 152 × 83 cm. Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo © NPL – DeA Picture Library / G. Nimatallah / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 67. René Boyvin, after Léonard Thiry, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, engraving, in Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or, Paris, 1563, plate 21. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

stirring the boiling cauldron with a blooming olive branch while scattering a handful of herbs into the mix.82 His Medea is nevertheless more refined. An upright female in a graceful contrapposto replaces Boyvin’s bowed figure with both legs curled under her. Her hair is neatly dressed with a ribbon instead of issuing in rivulets like the “streaming hair after the fashion of Bacchantes” (Met. 7.257–58) as seen in Boyvin’s print. She is adorned with a pearl earring, a diaphanous veil delicately sheathing her from her head, down her back and across her pudenda. Her figure is framed by the austere plinth and column behind her, forming a compositional counterbalance to the altars behind Aeson, thereby investing her with gravity and decorum. While Boyvin’s Aeson is stretched out supine on the ground and sleeping, as the Ovidian text relates, in the studiolo painting he is reclining on his perch, fully awake and in the act of leisurely stretching out, his powerful arms flung wide, his muscular limbs tense with pent-up vigor, while his weary gaze takes in a radiating Medea with a sideways tilt of the head. Curiously, the configuration 82 A fresco previously attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi and now to Lorenzo Sabatini in Palazzo Marescalchi, Bologna, of 1563 is modeled on Boyvin’s illustration of Medea pouring the brew on Aeson, who regains his youth, as illustrated by his beardless face and muscular chest. Curiously, Boyvin’s Medea pours potion on Aeson’s groins, implying the restoration of his virility, which may explain his gazing at Medea. For the fresco, see Preti Hamard, Ferdinando Marescalchi, figs. 14–16.

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Figure 68. Jacopo Caraglio, after Perino del Vaga, Jupiter in the Guise of a Satyr Observing Antiope, 1527, engraving from Gli amori degli dei, 21.1 × 13.5 cm. Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts), Budapest.

of his body is modeled on the sleeping Antiope taken by surprise by Jupiter in the shape of a satyr in Jacopo Caraglio’s engraving from the series The Loves of the Gods of 1527 (fig. 68).83 As odd as this choice of model may appear, it coincides with the 83 For this visual source, see Faietti, “From Sculpture to Print to Sculpture.” Schaefer, “The Studiolo,” 1:343, points out that Aeson resembles the Faun Barberini. However, this Hellenistic statue was discovered

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stipulations of artistic invention at the time to mask, dissimulate, and conceal the visual source, thus asserting artistic independence.84 In selecting a sleeping female as the primary model for a male figure who is awake and poised for action, Macchietti implicitly staked his claim for originality. As a successful foil to the ethereal and tranquilly beautiful Medea, Aeson acquires a heroic presentation that maintains a hold on self, lucidity, and manliness, notwithstanding the Ovidian account and the pictorial model of the sleeping nymph. Macchietti’s Medea Rejuvenating Aeson is consistent with the purpose and iconographical program of the studiolo. It is one of the overdoors decorating the cabinets that contained Francesco’s extensive collection of rare and prized artifacts, including musical instruments, branches of coral, specimens of stone, metal artifacts, works of art, weapons, antidotes, curative material, and books on various subjects.85 The amalgam of naturalia and artificialia inspired the humanist Vincenzo Borghini to unite the paintings and sculptures in the studiolo under the overarching concept of the interplay of art and nature. Borghini devoted each wall of the studiolo to one of the four elements; the Medea panel must have belonged to either the Fire wall or the Water wall, contingent on which of the elements gained precedence—the steaming cauldron or the magical liquid.86 In any event, Macchietti intended a clear reference to Francesco’s interest in art and nature. The plants in the foreground allude to the medical herbs and natural antidotes that Francesco, like the mythical Medea, would have sought to obtain in distant lands. Moreover, the splendid silver ewer, embellished with a gilded dolphin and a monstrous head, is presumably a “portrait” of one possessed by the Medici. Macchietti forged a visual and conceptual dialogue between his Medea and the focal painting in the studiolo that thematizes the relationships between art and nature. Frescoed on the central ceiling by Francesco Morandini (ca. 1544–97), it shows Prometheus, the symbol of human genius, receiving from Nature a rough stone to be transformed into a jewel (fig. 69). Both paintings depict a bearded naked male in a sitting posture accepting from a nude female figure a priceless object, but this is where the comparison ends, for Medea is analogous to Prometheus, not Nature, inasmuch as she innovatively transforms the raw material of nature (herbs, animal parts, etc.) into an invaluable product of medicine. It has been suggested that Macchietti’s Medea Rejuvenating Aeson also invokes Francesco’s profound interest in alchemy, as explicitly seen in another painting only in the 1620s (although some scholars hypothesized that a small statue or relief of this figure was already known in the sixteenth century). 84 Jacobs, “Aretino and Michelangelo,” 58–59. 85 For the contents of this studiolo, see Alberts, “The Studiolo.” 86 Schaefer, “The Studiolo,” 1:271, opts for the Fire wall, and Feinberg, “The Studiolo,” 54, relocates the panel on the Water wall.

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Figure 69. Francesco Morandini, Prometheus Receiving a Piece of Quartz from Nature, 1570, fresco. Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo © Alinari Archives / Art Resource, NY.

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at the studiolo, in which Giovanni Stradano portrays Francesco taking an active role in experimentation in an alchemy laboratory.87 Since rejuvenation and immortality were among the desired goals of alchemists, it is unsurprising that mid-sixteenth-century alchemical treatises refer to Medea’s restoration of Aeson’s youth.88 The linking of Medea to alchemy was sufficiently familiar that Lodovico Dolce (1508/10–68) refuted alchemical attempts of prolongatio vitae as absurdity at the incipit of the Medea canto in his adaptation of Ovid from 1553, Le trasformationi. Dolce mockingly cautions old women wishing to be young again to stay away from alchemists who deceitfully claim to possess Medea’s rejuvenating power.89 Although Macchietti’s painting displays no alchemical items, its physical context and a well-informed viewer would make this connection plausible. At odds with the sympathetic display of Medea, a number of artists closely attended to her ambiguous character, textually evinced in Ovid’s adulteration of her benevolent magic by the intermixing of tokens of malice. Medea’s appeal to Pluto, “King of the Shades,” and to his bride Proserpina signals her association with the underworld. Her barefoot ambling and her loose hair are sinister elements; the comparison of her hair to that of a bacchante underscores Medea’s wildly unrestrained demeanor.90 An additional measure of negativity is contributed by the subsequent fable of Pelias’s murder (Met. 7.297–351), where Medea, reproached as venefica, a poisoner (7.316), reveals herself as a devious, manipulative witch. Medea is begged by Pelias’s daughters to perform her rejuvenatory magic upon their father.91 The daughters, deceived by Medea’s apparently successful transformation of a butchered ram into a gamboling lamb, enter Pelias’s room and are persuaded to slash blindly at the prone body according to the established rites. When Medea plunges the butchered Pelias into a boiling vat, the daughters realize that she has deceitfully prepared an ordinary brew devoid of rejuvenating potency. Having thus brought about Pelias’s death at the hands of his own kith and kin, an exulting Medea flees the scene on her winged chariot, thereby escaping retribution. Note that the tales of Aeson and Pelias are not entirely separate but overlap in interesting ways. Thus, 87 For Francesco’s interest in alchemy, see Conticelli, “Lo Studiolo.” 88 The Pretiosa margarita novella (New Pearl of Great Price), attributed to the fourteenth-century Ferrarese physician Pietro Boni and printed in Venice in 1546, construes five myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as allegories of alchemy. In the adjusted fable, Medea instructs Aeson how to rejuvenate himself and helps him find an assistant who would regulate the heat of the cauldron, lest Aeson die. Willard, “The Metamorphoses of Metals,” 152–54. The Brescian alchemist and physician Giovanni Braccesco refers in his 1542 Il legno della vita (Wood of Life) to the herbs with which Medea restored Aeson’s youth. Conticelli, “Lo Studiolo,” 220–22. 89 Dolce, Le trasformationi, 151. 90 Stratton, Naming the Witch, 87–88. 91 This is Jason’s tyrannical uncle who sent him to find the Golden Fleece. However, since Jason has no role in this murder, Medea acts here on pure malice. Newlands, “The Metamorphosis of Ovid’s Medea,” 188.

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the classicist Charles Segal observes the proleptic presence of significant symbolic markers of Medea’s murderous nature and imminent cruelty against Pelias in the earlier narrative of Aeson. These include her disheveled appearance, the slaughter of a black sheep during the sacrificial rites, the implicit slaughter of animals whose parts are boiled in the cauldron, and, above all, the slashing of Aeson’s throat and the full exsanguination of his body—unmistakable and grotesque expressions of the violence and horror embodied in her magic.92 Even at the climax of the scene, when Aeson receives the youth-bestowing elixir transfusion, unspeakable gore is writ large insofar as Aeson takes the brew into his body “in part through his lips and part through the wound” (7.287–88).93 Medea holds sway not only over Aeson’s life but also over his death. Ovid describes her as having “buried [Aeson] in a deep slumber by her spells, like one dead” (7.252–54). The implication that Aeson may be lifeless, at least for a time just prior to receiving the transfusion, is expanded on in Bernard Salomon’s La Métamorphose d’Ovide figurée (1557), an abridged version of the poem that introduces each myth in an emblematic tripartite structure of title, woodcut, and eight-line synopsis. In the woodcut, entitled “Medee rajeunit Eson,” Medea stands half-naked, blending the potion in a cauldron, while the slumbering Aeson lies supine on the ground at the foot of an altar surmounted on each side by flaming torches (fig. 70). The verse that brings the epigram to its close—“When his life was ended, she restored youth and new blood to him”—intimates that Medea not only rejuvenates but also reanimates Aeson.94 The possibility that Aeson might actually die, or die for a time, resonates in one of the two preserved lines of Ovid’s lost tragedy Medea. Medea muses, most likely aloud to Jason: “I have had power to save, and do you ask whether I can destroy?”95 That her sorcery can become deadly in an instant is pointed out by Boccaccio: “For worse, her character was in keeping with her arts, for, if those failed, Medea thought nothing of resorting to the sword.”96 Similarly, Italian painters, aligning themselves with Ovid, Salomon, and Boccaccio, hinted at Medea’s wicked nature in their depictions of Aeson’s rejuvenation. A frieze illustrating the myth of Jason and Medea in eighteen panels was frescoed by Ludovico (1555–1619), Agostino (1557–1602), and Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) 92 Segal, “Black and White Magic,” 13–17, points at parallel motifs and wording between Aeson’s rejuvenation and Pelias’s death. 93 Segal, “Black and White Magic,” 14; and Libatique, “A Narratological Investigation,” 82. 94 Wygant, Medea, Magic and Modernity, 41–42, takes this aspect of death as Salomon’s invention, ignoring Ovid’s comment. Salomon’s woodcuts exerted influence on subsequent illustrators of Ovid, including Virgil Solis (Frankfurt, 1563) and Antonio Tempesta (Amsterdam, 1606). 95 This line is quoted in Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 8.5.6. 96 Boccaccio, Famous Women, 75 (17.3).

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Figure 70. Bernard Salomon, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, woodcut, in La Métamorphose d’Ovide figurée, Lyon, 1557, 78. Photo: Private collection / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 71. Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, 1584, fresco. Sala di Giasone, Palazzo Fava, Bologna. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio / Electa / Antonio Guerra / Bridgeman Images.

in Palazzo Fava, Bologna, in 1584. Aeson lies naked on his back with his head dangling in midair as Medea insouciantly slashes his throat (fig. 71). This episode, depicted in earlier Italian editions of Ovid (fig. 72), may give rise to confusion to the extent that one scholar has identified the scene as the killing of Pelias despite its inconsistency with the narrative sequence.97 The Carracci could have easily clarified the content by showing side by side the gashing of Aeson’s throat and the transfusing of the brew into his veins, two concatenated moments in Ovid’s poem that Boyvin nevertheless split into two illustrations.98 Such a continuous narration would have complied with its use in the flanking panels, displaying Medea’s preceding steps in the rejuvenating ritual and the subsequent narrative of Pelias’s mendacious non-rejuvenation. Although in the Aeson narrative Medea is actuated by overtly benign intentions in response to Jason’s filial plea, the throat-slitting moment differs markedly from the previous stages of the elaborate ritual in its constitution of a “baroque moment” that has the “greatest dramatic impact, the ‘make or break’ moment of the story.”99 97 Pagliani, “Per l’esegesi del ciclo di Giasone,” 253. The male figure in Assereto’s painting (fig. 78) was erroneously identified by one nineteenth-century scholar as Pelias; Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 390. 98 Aeson’s positioning on a high platform rather than on the ground as the text relates bears a resemblance to Italian editions. This woodcut also provided a model for the simultaneous display of Medea performing early stages of the magic in the preceding panel. Pluto and Proserpina are from Boyvin’s print; see Campbell, “The Carracci,” 223. In Dolce’s Trasformationi the naked Medea is shown astride Aeson, who lies on the ground as she bends over to slit his throat, in a literal configuration of a woman taking the upper hand. 99 Nanette Salomon describes Artemisia Gentileschi’s Uffizi Judith Beheading Holofernes using these words; Salomon, “Judging Artemisia,” 51.

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Figure 72. Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, woodcut, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Venice, 1538, 71v. Yale University Library.

Presenting the male body in a supremely vulnerable position marks a critical crossroads in the magical process from life to death, or equally, from death to life. The ambiguity resides in the dual significance of this supreme moment of violence. Does the opening of the jugular vein to make the body bleed out its last drop in an agony of spasm and terror indicate a necessary preparatory step in the transfusion of the rejuvenating potion, or does it betoken sheer cruelty with a fatal end, one frivolously meted out to sacrificial animals as a matter of course? As we have seen, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Salomon associated Medea’s rejuvenation of Aeson with her notoriously murderous character. This link was made explicit by Carlo Cesare Malvasia in relation to the Fava fresco, who wrote to underscore the lethality of the act that Medea “cuts [Aeson] up in pieces.”100 Moreover, in referring to the symbolic role of the grisaille statues of various deities, which stand interspersed with the panels, he explains that the Carracci associated Medea Rejuvenating Aeson with the “malignant Saturn, since he too slit the throats of his sons and then devoured them.”101 100 Malvasia, Life of the Carracci, 107. 101 Malvasia, Life of the Carracci, 107. Campbell, “The Carracci,” 219, argues that the Carracci relied on Boyvin’s illustrations only to make “aggressive revision.” The Carracci seem to rely on Boyvin’s ornamental

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Figure 73. Giovanni Battista Scultori (attr.), after Giulio Romano, Judith Beheading Holofernes, ca. 1540, engraving, 15.5 × 21.8 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.

The Carracci’s display of a slumbering, splayed, bleeding old man coolly slaughtered face-up by a composed, throat-slitting woman wielding her knife from a position of upright domination recalls the topos of the “Power of Woman,” and particularly the iconography of Jael and Judith. These two, who manifest virile properties not typically attributed to womankind, were often censured as treacherous females, deceptively intoxicating Sisera and Holofernes before slaying them.102 The indoor setting, itself inconsistent with Ovid’s text, Aeson’s placement on a raised, sheet-covered platform, and his etiolated arms and leg slewed high at the hip stir up representations of Judith and Holofernes, one of which is the engraving attributed to Giovanni Battista Scultori (1503–75) after a design by Giulio Romano (fig. 73). Like Aeson, Holofernes lies naked and supine upon a bed, which is depicted parallel to the picture plane, his head yanked back viciously over the edge of the bed. However, the sturdy and overtly erotic Judith, who vigorously decapitates Holofernes in the print, represents the precise counterimage of the tranquil young woman enlisted by the Carracci for the role of Medea. As Stephen Campbell observes, frames of the narratives: a roundel to the right of the rejuvenation scene shows Father Time as Saturn—a winged man with an hourglass leaning on a crutch. 102 Ostrow, “Note sugli affreschi,” compares Carracci’s Medea to these heroines.

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Figure 74. Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Medea and Pelias’s Daughters, 1584, fresco. Sala di Giasone, Palazzo Fava, Bologna. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio / Electa / Sergio Anelli / Bridgeman Images.

“The savage violence at odds with her tender appearance serves to highlight Medea’s paradoxical, unpredictable nature.”103 Medea’s powers to rejuvenate or kill at will are represented by means of visual juxtaposition in the subsequent panel (fig. 74). In the left foreground, Medea, witnessed by Pelias’s daughters, plunges an aged ram into a cauldron and turns it into a sprightly lamb; positioned further right, Medea flees in her chariot, as the dutiful daughters immerse their father in the cauldron to no avail.104 More subtly, in Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, the blood issuing from Aeson’s neck-wound and the fluids overflowing the cauldron stream and swirl on either side of Medea, giving expression in a startling visual image to her unique power either to restore Aeson’s youth or to doom him to a permanent death. Mythological sorcery came to be a prevalent topic among artists and collectors in Baroque Genoa. The figure of Circe, as was elaborated earlier, managed to win a preferential place in the imagination of the Genoese artists, but Medea also 103 Campbell, “The Carracci,” 225. 104 Pelias in bed is stabbed by his daughters in early woodcuts of Ovid and by Medea in Boyvin’s print.

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Figure 75. Anton Maria Vassallo, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, ca. 1641–45, oil on canvas, 51 × 68 cm. Corridoio Vasariano, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

made a number of significant appearances in paintings. Anton Maria Vassallo (ca. 1620–64/73) produced no fewer than three canvases of Medea Rejuvenating Aeson (f ig. 75). All three are modeled on the etching of Johann Wilhelm Baur (1607–40) in the Vienna edition of the Metamorphoses from 1641 (fig. 76), a date that establishes a terminus post quem for these paintings.105 Running countercurrent with the pictorial tradition initiated by Bernard Salomon (fig. 70), Baur revived the moment of throat-slitting from the early Italian editions of the poem (fig. 72). His Medea is, for a change, fully garbed, but with bared arms and right leg. Kneeling beside the slumbering Aeson, she lunges forward over the body of her victim and half-engulfs him, extending the whole of her right flank to gain a firm foothold for what appears to be a physically strenuous task. Her muscular right arm cuts away 105 In another painting, hinging on Antonio Tempesta’s illustration, a semi-nude Medea is shown standing between the cauldron and Aeson, who sleeps at a slant within a magic circle. The candles puncturing the altar table, as in Baur’s image, replace the tall torches surrounding it in Tempesta. Baur’s illustration exerted influence on the Augsburg native Joseph Heintz the Younger (1600–1678), who produced several canvases of Medea and Aeson during his long stay in Venice. See Cannone and Gallavotti Cavallero, “Dipinti inediti,” 64.

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Figure 76. Johann Wilhelm Baur, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, etching, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Vienna, 1641. Photo: Wellcome Collection.

at Aeson’s upturned, defenseless neck, while with her left she catches the spurting jets of blood into a vessel, held close to Aeson’s face. Baur’s impact on Vassallo is evident, for example, in the canvas held at the Uffizi (fig. 75) along with its pendant Circe Transforming Ulysses’s Companions into Beasts.106 Vassallo likewise portrayed a modestly clothed Medea kneeling beside Aeson and holding a knife and a bowl. Yet while Baur emphasized Medea’s physical strength, imparting to her a vigorous, straining quality, Vassallo’s Medea strikes the viewer as a compassionate and gentle creature. A closer look at the environment in which she is shown reveals subtler overtones in accordance with Baur’s illustration. The miscellany of objects ranged about in Baur’s etching inspired Vassallo to fulfill his preference for still life painting under the guidance of Flemish masters living in Genoa, chiefly his teacher Vincenzo Malò (ca. 1605–ca. 1650).107 Along the perimeter of the magic circle enclosing Aeson and Medea, Baur arranged a shovel, the decapitated heads of a stag and a cat, a bone fragment, a severed wing, a piece of 106 The pendants have little formal and compositional similarities. The Circe pendant is one of six comparable paintings that Vassallo painted under the influence of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s painting. Orlando, Anton Maria Vassallo, 31–35, figs. 38–43 (fig. 39 is the Uffizi pendant). 107 Malò’s sojourn in the city extended from around 1634 until mid-1640s.

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cloth, a plate of animal parts, a verdant branch, and three ornate jugs. In Vassallo’s composition, a pair of crossed torches in the left foreground enhance the dramatic chiaroscuro; several ornate urns allude to the material consumption of Genoese nobility; flowers growing on the spot where the potion was spilled (Met. 7.282–84) recall the centrality of flower arrangements in Dutch still-life painting; and the magnificent tome propped open atop a human skull alludes to the association of incantatory magic with necromancy (see chapter 5). These items are interpretable as tropes of vanitas, a topos intimately associated with witchcraft by dint of the evanescent moment of magic and the power over life and death. In this respect, the valuable urns may signify endeavoring for fortune amid the transience of life, symbolized by the green shoots; while the skull-propped book stands for the vanity of human knowledge in the face of inevitable death.108 Most startlingly, Baur, whose invention was emulated by Vassallo, sets three demons—unmistakably identified as Christian devils rather than classical supernatural spirits (daimones)—against roiling plumes of smoke and steam emanating from the boiling cauldron. Casting a roguish look over his shoulder at the viewer, as if to vaunt his mischievous intent, one demon in this group loosens his bowls in a well-directed jet right into the steaming pot. (In Vassallo’s poorly preserved painting, two devils are seen hovering above the cauldron, one of them turning his buttocks to the viewer.) The ribald image belongs to a prolific tradition of scatological imagery in relation to devils.109 The comical allure of the body’s lower regions and orifices—celebrated elements of grotesque realism in Bakhtinian literary theory—is enhanced by its particular implications in this context. The amused viewer, happily entering into the spirit of the impish provocation, might wonder whether the demon’s decidedly unsolicited contribution to the magical recipe arrives to the detriment of its efficacy, or whether, on the contrary, it might feasibly improve it! Moreover, the infernal waste product may well be interpreted as a satirical comment on Ovid’s poetical proliferation of the ingredients in Medea’s complex brew, which tends to get somewhat out of hand, even for the poet himself. As if to speedily bring the list to a close, Ovid hyperbolically states that Medea added a “thousand nameless things,” a remark that perhaps betrays a loss of patience in his own enumeration of bizarreries; alternatively, the remark may be intended to emphasize the mystery of a concoction involving far too many not-quite-nameable ingredients.110 The demon’s

108 For this motif, see Hults, The Witch as Muse, 161; Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 136; and Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 126, fig. 10. On witchcraft and vanitas, see Ebert-Schifferer, “Il teatro filosofico della vanità,” 74–77. 109 See, for instance, Goldstein, “Il Tristo Buco”; and Allen, On Farting, 90–94. 110 Newlands, “The Metamorphosis of Ovid’s Medea,” 187; Libatique, “A Narratological Investigation,” 81–82; and Gildenhard and Zissos, “The Transformations of Ovid’s Medea,” 105–6.

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Figure 77. Andries Stock (?), after Jacques de Gheyn II, The Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, ca. 1610, engraving, two plates, 43.5 × 65.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

excrement, surely as bizarre and “indescribable” an ingredient as one might find in any classification, pokes irreverent fun at Medea’s recipe. In a broader sense, Baur and Vassallo’s introduction of demons to the classical fable paints Medea’s magic with Christian colors.111 The presence of demons characterizes the inhospitable mise-en-scène, already stuffed with magic accoutrements and strewn carelessly with animal limbs, as a setting for diabolical witchcraft. These elements are emblematic of malignant and heretical witches, as can be seen in The Preparation of the Witches’ Sabbath, engraved after a drawing of the Dutch artist Jacques de Gheyn II (fig. 77), and in the German broadside Zauberey (Witchcraft), designed by Michael Herr (1626).112 Baur and Vassallo blur the distinction between ancient literature and early modern beliefs about witchcraft in much the same way as authors of witchcraft treatises, who use Medea and other illustrious ancient witches to give voice to a prescribed cant. For example, Reginald Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), draws on Ovid’s Metamorphoses as an authoritative source for witchcraft practices and cites verses from Medea’s incantation about her ability 111 Similar syncretism can be seen in sixteenth-century German editions of Virgil’s Aeneid that visually conflate Tartarus with the Christian Hell by depicting a witch flying on a goat in the underworld. Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 129–31. 112 Heintz copied figures from De Gheyn’s print into a painting of Medea rejuvenating Aeson. See Cannone and Gallavotti Cavallero, “Dipinti inediti,” 64.

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to overturn the world to describe the practices of the accused witches of his day.113 Baur and Vassallo’s demons, in their nature and retrograde appearance, not only underscore Medea’s upside-down world but also def ine her magic as evil and harmful. At the same time, the defecating demon illustrates a moral message to the Christian viewer: Medea’s magical knowledge is no better than excrement.114 While Vassallo portrays an ostensibly peaceful Medea engaged in benign magic, the uncompromising knife she wields and the devils visible in the forbidding setting offer a reminder of sorcery’s deadly consequences. The Uffizi Medea has much in common with a painting produced by Gioacchino Assereto (1600–1649), another native of Genoa, in 1644 for the Palazzo of Agostino Ayrolo (known today as Palazzo Ayrolo-Negrone) (fig. 78). Whether Assereto drew on Vassallo or the other way round, the undeniable similarity between the two paintings has not, to my knowledge, been recognized thus far. In both paintings, Aeson lies unconscious in the middle of a magic circle with his upper body elevated above ground, as Medea kneels beside him and jugulates his throat. Both Vassallo and Assereto filled the foreground with a pair of tall, crossed tapers, a book lying open atop a human skull, and valuable vessels, including an identical gilded bowl. Each composition is delineated on the left by a coal-lit altar and on the right by a cauldron surrounded by greenery. The dramatic effects of light and shade bear witness to the artists’ acquaintance with Caravaggio’s works.115 Assereto, for his part, originally changes the parameters of the spectator’s experience by devising Medea Rejuvenating Aeson as a counterpart to Apollo Flaying Marsyas (fig. 79). This impressive set of pendants—each of which measures 316 by 210 centimeters—has largely been kept out of the limelight, mainly because, as with many other artworks in Genoese private collections, access to the public is limited.116 The Marsyas canvas seems to have been Assereto’s point of departure in creating the pendants. This would not be surprising, since in the same year, 1644, he made another Apollo Flaying Marsyas in Palazzo Ayrolo, frescoed on one central ceiling.117 Assereto took his bearings from Baur’s illustration accompanying the sixth poem of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (382–400) (fig. 80). The myth has it that Apollo flayed Marsyas 113 Fox, “Authorising the Metamorphic Witch,” 173–75. 114 For an image of a devil ridiculing a necromancer by projecting a reflection of his own ass at the necromancer with a mirror, see Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 97. 115 Assereto visited in Rome in 1639; Soprani, Le vite, 170. 116 For an excellent overview of Genoese art, see the introduction of Bober, Boccardo, and Boggero, A Superb Baroque. On the pendants, see Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 388–91. 117 Soprani, Le vite, 170. Giovanni Maria Bottalla began to fresco the ceiling, and after his death Assereto was commissioned to continue the work. The initial layout of the Marsyas fresco might have been foreseen by Bottalla, but the painting and its bozzetto are by Assereto; Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 391–94. The fresco has a vertical format and is painted in bright colors. Notably, Apollo peels the victim’s skin with both hands.

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Figure 78. Gioacchino Assereto, Medea Rejuvenating Aeson, 1644, oil on canvas, 316 × 210 cm. Palazzo Ayrolo-Negrone, Genoa. Photo: Antonio Gesino Archive, Genoa.

alive as punishment for the satyr’s intolerable hubris in seeing fit to challenge the god of music to a contest that pitted his humble flute against the god’s lyre, an encounter in which the god emerged victorious to claim his gruesome loser’s forfeit. In emulation of Baur’s figures, Assereto configured Marsyas in a seated, three-quarter view and bound to a tree trunk by the arms: the left lowered to the ground and the right uplifted. On the left, Apollo, shown in profile, curls his left knee around a jutting rock and reaches out to skin Marsyas’s uplifted arm. The alterations contributed by Assereto expose his familiarity with at least one of the two Marsyas canvases painted by Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), works that made a tremendous impact on Genoese artists, including Assereto.118 The Marsyas pendant bears a striking resemblance to the Ribera in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (fig. 81), more so than to the canvas in Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.119 118 One now-lost painting of this fable by Ribera was purchased by Genoese nobleman Giovanni Francesco Serra in 1646. Another, believed to be an original Ribera or a Riberesque version, was sold in Genoa in 1637, remarkably the same year to which Ribera’s two canvases are dated. The presence of a Riberesque composition in Genoa in 1637 is supported by repeated citations by local painters. For these paintings and the influence of the Ribera Marsyas on Assereto’s Cain and Abel, see Orlando, “Il riberismo dei genovesi.” On Assereto’s other canvases of the Marsyas fable, see Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 388. 119 Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 388, notes the resemblance of the pendant to both paintings by Ribera. To a lesser degree, the Apollo in the fresco is similar to the Brussels painting.

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Figure 79. Gioacchino Assereto, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1644, oil on canvas, 318 × 210 cm. Palazzo AyroloNegrone, Genoa. Photo: Antonio Gesino Archive, Genoa.

In a departure from Baur’s vertical composition, Assereto adopted from Ribera the oblique figures and the tree trunk rising aslant on the right. Like Ribera’s Apollo, Assereto rendered the Sun god with blond tresses against a clear sky tinted with yellow. Apollo’s robe—most fittingly painted by Assereto in yellow—swirls dramatically around his idealized nude body. His legs are arranged so that the left knee is flexed and thrusts forward to meet an emphatic glint of light just as the right leg bends back at an angle. The replacement of the Apollonian lyre with a violin and the addition of a lamenting witness clasping his face with both hands are also derived from Ribera’s canvas. Tiziana Zennaro correctly points out that although Ribera abided by the conventional iconography of Marsyas as a human figure equipped with a flute, Assereto invested Marsyas with Pan’s notional attributes of caprine legs and ears and granted him ownership of a syrinx or panpipes.120 However, what Zennaro fails to recognize is that Assereto drew his amalgamation of Marsyas and Pan from Baur’s illustration, as well as from Ribera’s model. Assereto choreographed the Medea canvas in accordance with its pendant. Aeson and Marsyas each forms a diagonal axis running through the center of the composition and roughly parallel to Medea and Apollo, respectively. Similar to 120 Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 388, 394–96. In fact, in the Brussels version, there is a flute on the ground and a syrinx hangs on the tree to the right.

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Figure 80. Johann Wilhelm Baur, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, etching, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Vienna, 1641. The New York Public Library.

the treatment given to Marsyas’s unidealized physique, Aeson’s emaciated frame, painted in flesh tones that echo Caravaggio, is characterized by an immediate physical pathos, to which the jutting ribs and visible bones painfully attest. Both Aeson and Marsyas are arranged vertically; Aeson’s head droops back, while Marsyas’s falls forward. The bent leg of Aeson, and similarly of Marsyas, is flanked by an extended arm that is flexed in a gesture conventionally interpreted since antiquity to signify inebriation, sleep, or torpor.121 Apollo and Medea are placed in a similar echoic relation. Wrapped in billowing robes, both bend forward from the torso to wreak violence on their victim’s body. Both are depicted flexing a knee and reaching with outstretched arms to perform the violent act. With one hand, Apollo carries out the flaying of Marsyas’s skin, while with his free hand he grips a piece of rope to steady himself; Medea, in rolled-up sleeves, brushes against Aeson’s clavicle as she lances the vein with the clinical detachment of a surgeon, expertly pulling the skin taut while preparing to make an incision. The formal and compositional similarities between the pendants are subverted by a single figure. In the bottom right corner, a horrorstruck juvenile satyr, absent from Baur’s etching, witnesses the abominable skinning of Marsyas mouth 121 Pestilli, “Michelangelo’s Children’s Bacchanal,” 24–25.

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Figure 81. Jusepe de Ribera, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1637, oil on canvas, 202 × 255 cm. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

agape and clasping his cheeks in his hands.122 His role in the Ovidian narrative is indispensable. After a brief, graphic description of the flaying, Ovid turns to the emotional reactions shown by the various satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and herdsmen who mournfully witness the cruel death of Marsyas. Remarkably, Ovid does not select Marsyas as the focal entity about to undergo a metamorphosis, as one might expect given other myths in which new material identities are substituted for old ones.123 Rather, the onus falls on the anguished manifestation of witnessed horror: it is the tears shed by the rustic lamenters that finally undergo a metamorphosis: “The fertile earth was soaked [with tears], and soaking caught those tears and 122 In Assereto’s fresco at Palazzo Ayrolo, as in the canvas, the satyr-boy is seated in the foreground, clasping his head in his hands, albeit with his back to the scene so as to turn away from the atrocity. The presence of King Midas and three other spectators in the background of the fresco is similar to Ribera’s two versions of the myth. 123 Carole Newlands explains that since Marsyas lost his identity—he cries “why do you tear me from myself?” (Met. 6.385)—“no body in any form is left” to be metamorphosed. Newlands, “Violence and Resistance,” 168. For variants of the Marsyas myth, see Plato, Euthydemus 285c9–d1; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.4.2; Hyginus, Fabulae 165; Ovid, Fasti 6.695–710; and Apuleius, Florida 3.

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drank them deep into her veins” (Met. 6.396–97), after which a river sprang up on the spot, named after Marsyas in commemoration of his death. The metamorphosis of a stream of tears into a real stream is visually evinced by a small pond on the left of the composition and a meandering river at the distant right, which appears, in the illusion of the perspectival space, to run above the satyr boy’s head. This metamorphic regeneration brings the Marsyas and Medea myth closer, for in both narratives the spilt blood is replaced by a regenerative liquid—as a river of tears fertilizing the land or as a youth-restoring elixir. Revolving around the focal concern of a lethal injury to the living body, the pendants thematize the cycle of life and its obstruction. The juxtaposition of the two myths consists in their differences: Aeson is anesthetized into a deep slumber, whereas the conscious Marsyas howls in unspeakable agony as he is tortured to death; Aeson’s life is restored to him, while that of Marsyas oozes out before our eyes. The moralizing lesson of vanitas is foregrounded by an ensemble already noted in Vassallo’s Medea comprising a skull, a book, flowers, and valuable vessels. The fleeting moment further reverberates in the pairing of music and magic—the arts accredited to Apollo and Medea, respectively—and in the juxtaposition of a nocturnal scene of magic and a daytime scene accommodating the Sun god.124 The pendants align with the predilection of Genoese art collectors for violence and emotional intensity, which gave the impetus to the production of paintings of martyrdom and unconventional deaths.125 An image depicting the slashing of the throat of an unconscious man, whose extended arm is reminiscent of that of Christ in Pietà scenes, belongs to this genre, regardless of the restorative outcome of this act. The flaying scene lays stress on the act of rejuvenation as opposite, but at the same time it underlines the very moment of putting Aeson in a temporary death. More specifically, Zennaro has evocatively proposed that the themes of the inexorable decay of the body, death, spiritual purification, and rebirth appear timely in light of the death of Giovanni Tomaso Ayrolo on February 1644, after which event his twenty-two-year-old son Agostino (1622–57) extended and renewed the property.126 In this respect, it is worth noting that both Apollo and Medea enjoy a tutelary connection to medicine and pharmacology. Apollo Medicus, the god of healing and plagues, is the father of medicine and vivisection, while Medea is associated with

124 Suida Manning, “The Transformation of Circe,” 692–96, interprets the bust of Pan in some of Castiglione’s paintings of Circe from the 1650s as a vanitas motif on account of its allusion to the brevity of music, not unlike that of magic. The bond of magic and music in Assereto’s pendants anticipates Castiglione. 125 For example, in Assereto’s Suicide of Cato (ca. 1640), the Roman stateman Cato, having failed to commit suicide, tears the stiches out of his self-inflicted wound with his bare hands in an ultimately successful attempt to take his own life (Plutarch, Cato the Younger 36.70). 126 Zennaro, Gioacchino Assereto, 396.

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plant-lore, the concoction of medicines, and the process of infusion.127 Assereto’s pendants, therefore, address two complementary themes: dramatic and unusual deaths, meant to cater to the tastes of Genoese patricians, and purification and regeneration, meant to commemorate the deceased patron. While artists were heavily influenced by the Ovidian version of Medea, especially as illustrated in the Metamorphoses and the Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d’Or, it is evident from the paintings gathered here that each tailored his painting to suit its artistic context—a fresco cycle, a decorative program, or an accompanying pendant—as well as the subjects and interests esteemed by the patron or art collector: alchemy and herbal medicine, the reciprocity of art and nature, violence and abnormal deaths, youth and the inexorable passage of time, and demonic witchcraft. Vassallo emphasized this last subject through the insertion of demons into the scene, while he, the Carracci, and Assereto all drew attention to the ambivalent nature of Medea, carefully poised in the penumbra between good and evil, by depicting the climactic moment at which she slits Aeson’s throat. The deceit, brutality, and unpredictability evinced in the failed rejuvenation of Pelias, constructed by Ovid as a mirror counterpart to Aeson’s successful revival, lead the viewer to reconsider Aeson’s fate and raise the possibility of a crueler end to his tale. Why did artists obscure Medea’s benevolent intentions? It is possible that depiction of a benign witch was intolerable in the post-Tridentine era. In his discussion of Ismeno, the wicked Muslim necromancer in Toquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), Francesco Samarini convincingly argues that his popularity in Italian culture surpassed that of his good counterpart, the magician of Ascalon, because the concept of beneficial magic was difficult to support in the post-Tridentine context, while portrayals of demonic magicians easily conformed with the blanket condemnation of witchcraft.128 Of course, if the artists had wished merely to portray a cruel Medea, they easily could have painted her deception of Pelias’s daughters. Yet it is in the Aeson tale that Medea most forcefully resembles the new stereotype of the witch practicing maleficia: capable of flight, practicing nocturnal sorcery, equipped with diverse magical paraphernalia, and able to dominate men and turn the world upside-down. Underscoring the potentially lethal results of Medea’s initially beneficent actions, these artists firmly establish her role as a prototype for the early modern witch.

127 The initial V in the second edition of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabriaca (1555) depicts Apollo flaying Marsyas, an echo of Vesalius’s name of anatomy an “Apollinea disciplina.” See Ciobanu, “Fashioning Iconicity.” Pierre Jacquelot’s book of health advices L’art de vivre longuement sous le nom de Médée (Lyon, 1630) aims to “revivify men of all ages, just as Medea rejuvenated Aeson.” Wygant, Medea, Magic and Modernity, 41–42. 128 Samarini, “I nipoti di Ismeno,” 139.

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Destabilizing Dichotomies Early modern artworks depicting Circe and Medea share several common elements. As in the works discussed in previous chapters, male figures are portrayed being dominated, ridiculed, and emasculated—now by an alluring, often bare-breasted young witch. This domination frequently takes the form of sensual violence. Medea cuts the throat of the unconscious Aeson in allusion to the man-slaying heroines Jael and Judith; Circe licentiously swings her leg across a man’s body as he holds his own dismembered head, giving her room to graft a bestial head in its place. Comic elements also recur; images of a child micturating on a severed human head, and a demon defecating into a magical potion mock the belief in magical transformation while promoting artists’ license to wittily recreate classical myths. Finally, the accomplishment of the magical task is left uncertain. By rendering Medea in the very act of slaying Aeson, prior to his sorcerous rejuvenation, artists raise doubts about the act’s benign conclusion, while Circe’s melancholy implies that her magical transformations, although visible, are illusory and that the transformed animals are mere figments of her imagination. Richard Kieckhefer incisively opens his landmark Magic in the Middle Ages by theorizing magic as a crossroads “where religion converges with science, popular beliefs intersect with those of the educated classes, and the conventions of fiction meet with the realities of daily life.”129 Sorcerous scenes of Medea and Circe in early modern Italy present just such a variety of coexistent contrasts. Above all, however, artists appear to be preoccupied with these scenes of magical transformation as an opportunity to challenge the very dichotomies that magic itself destabilizes: real and fanciful, transient and stable, benign and malicious. In blurring the boundaries separating these supposed opposites, these artists obfuscate their narrative and offer a meditation on the volatile, deceptive, and illusory nature of magic.

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129 Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 1–2.

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Apollonius Rhodius. Argonautica. Trans. R. C. Seaton. London: William Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1912. Aristotle. Problems. Trans. W. S. Hett. London: William Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Famous Women. Ed. and trans. Virginia Brown. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. Boschini, Marco. La carta del navegar pitoresco. Venice: Baba, 1660. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Ed. Holbrook Jackson. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2001. Conti, Natale. Natale Conti’s Mythologies: A Select Translation. Trans. Anthony DiMatteo. New York and London: Garland, 1994. da Vinci, Leonardo. The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Ed. Jean Paul Richter. 2 vols. London: Phaidon, 1970. de Lancre, Pierre. On the Inconstancy of Witches: Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons. Trans. Harriet Stone and Gerhild Scholz Williams. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Dolce, Lodovico. Le trasformationi. Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1553. The Florentine Fior di virtu of 1491. Trans. Nicholas Fersin. Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 1953. Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. A. T. Murray. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Kors, Alan Charles, and Edward Peters, eds. Witchcraft in Europe 400–1700: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Kramer, Heinrich. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the “Malleus Maleficarum.” Ed. and trans. Christopher S. Mackay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Lea, Henry Charles. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft. 3 vols. Ed. Arthur C. Howland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. Trans. Allan Gilbert. 3 vols. Durham: Duke University Press, 1965. Malvasia, Carlo Cesare. Life of the Carracci. Trans. with commentary Anne Summerscale. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1984. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanfrancesco. Dialogo intitolato La strega, overo di gli inganni de demoni. Trans. Turino Turini da Pescia. Pescia: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1555. Soprani, Raffaele. Le vite de pittori, scoltori, et architetti genovesi. Genoa: Bottaro and Tiboldi, 1674. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. Ed. Rosanna Bettarini, commentary by Paola Barocchi. 6 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1966–87.

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Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists. Trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Weyer, Johann. Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, “De praestigiis daemonum.” Ed. George Mora, trans. John Shea. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991.

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Poole, Julia E. Italian Maiolica and Incised Slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Préaud, Maxime. “La Sorcière de Noël.” Hamsa 7, special issue: L’ésoterisme d’Albrecht Dürer (1977): 47–51. Préaud, Maxime. “De Melencolia D. (La mélancolie diabolique).” Les Cahiers de Fontenay 11–12 (1978): 123–38. Preti Hamard, Monica. Ferdinando Marescalchi (1754–1816): Un collezionista italiano nella Parigi napoleonica. 2 vols. Bologna: Minerva, 2005. Ringbom, Sixten. “Some Pictorial Conventions for the Recounting of Thoughts and Experience in Late Medieval Art.” In Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, ed. Flemming G. Andersen, Esther Nyholm, Marianne Powell, and Flemming Talbo Stubkjaer, 38–69. Odense: Odense University Press, 1980. Roberts, Gareth. “The Descendants of Circe: Witches and Renaissance Fictions.” In Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, 183–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Roberts, Jane. Italian Master Drawings: Leonardo to Canaletto from the British Royal Collection. London: Collins Harvill, 1987. Rossetti, Marta. “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli.” In L’incantesimo di Circe: Temi di magia nella pittura da Dosso Dossi a Salvator Rosa, ed. Stefania Macioce, 106–56. Rome: Logart, 2004. Salomon, Nanette. “Judging Artemisia: A Baroque Woman in Modern Art History.” In The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, ed. Mieke Bal, 33–62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Samarini, Francesco. “I nipoti di Ismeno: Per una genealogia di maghi nell’epica del Seicento.” In “Al suon de’ mormoranti carmi”: Magia e scienza nell’epica tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Tancredi Artico and Angelo Chiarelli, 137–63. Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2020. Schaefer, Scott J. “The Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1976. Schiesari, Juliana. The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Segal, Charles. “Black and White Magic in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Passion, Love, and Art.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 9 (2002): 1–34. Sgarbi, Vittorio, ed. Il male: Esempi di crudeltà. 2 vols. Milan: Skira, 2005. Sgarbi, Vittorio. Pseudo Caroselli: La morte di Cleopatra [Quaderni del Barocco 16]. Ariccia: Arti Grafiche Ariccia, 2012. Sharrock, Alison. “Representing Metamorphosis.” In Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas Elsner, 103–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Simons, Patricia. “Manliness and the Visual Semiotics of Bodily Fluids in Early Modern Culture.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39 (2009): 331–73. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

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Simons, Patricia. “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library: The Intersection of Classical Fantasy with Christian Vice during the Italian Renaissance.” In Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, ed. Alison Poe and Marice Rose, 264–304. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. “From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch in Classical Literature.” In Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, ed. Dayna Kalleres and Kimberly Stratton, 41–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Standring, Timothy J., and Martin Clayton. Castiglione: Lost Genius. London: Royal Collection Trust, 2013. Stephens, Walter. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Stratton, Kimberly B. Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Suida Manning, Bertina. “The Transformation of Circe: The Significance of the Sorceress as Subject in 17th Century Genoese Painting.” In Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, ed. Mauro Natale, 2:689–708. Milan: Electa, 1984. Summers, David. “Form and Gender.” In Visual Culture: Images and Interpretation, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, 384–411. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Swan, Claudia. Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Swan, Claudia. “Counterfeit Chimeras: Early Modern Theories of the Imagination and the Work of Art.” In Vision and Its Instruments: Art, Science, and Technology in Early Modern Europe, ed. Alina Payne, 216–37. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. Tal, Guy. “Disbelieving in Witchcraft: Allori’s Melancholic Circe in the Palazzo Salviati.” Athanor 22 (2004): 57–66. Tal, Guy. “Skepticism and Morality in Jacques de Gheyn II’s Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 44 (2022): 5–27. Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Thumiger, Chiara. “Metamorphosis: Human into Animals.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, ed. Gordon Lindsay Campbell, 384–413. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Walker Bynum, Carolyn. Metamorphosis and Identity. New York: Zone Books, 2001. Weston-Lewis, Aidan. “Francesco Albani ‘Disegnatore’: Some Additions and Clarifications.” Master Drawings 44 (2006): 299–332. Willard, Thomas. “The Metamorphoses of Metals: Ovid and the Alchemists.” In Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp, 151–63. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007.

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Wittkower, Rudolf. The Drawings of the Carracci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. London: Phaidon, 1952. Wygant, Amy. Medea, Magic and Modernity in France: Stages and Histories, 1553–1797. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007. Yarnall, Judith. Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Zennaro, Tiziana. Gioacchino Assereto (1600–1650) e i pittori della sua scuola. 2 vols. Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2011. Zika, Charles. “Images of Circe and Discourses of Witchcraft, 1480–1580.” Zeitenblicke: Online-Journal für die Geschichtswissenschaften 1 (2002). http://www.zeitenblicke. historicum.net/2002/01/zika/zika.html. Zika, Charles. Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Zika, Charles. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

5.

A Visit from the Devil Horror and Liminality in Caravaggesque Paintings Abstract: Four early seventeenth-century Roman paintings collectively forge a novel iconography that upturns the stereotype of the powerful and appalling witch. It presents the image of a horror-stricken witch (of either sex) fending off a pair of claws exscinded by the frame from the implied figure of the devil. Art historians have noted the distinctive Caravaggesque manner of these paintings, as well as the moralizing critique of the relationship between the Devil and his clientele. However, meager scholarly attention has been paid to the visceral and cerebral experience of viewing the paintings. This chapter argues that the image of the radically excised devil forms the emotional and intellectual crux of the paintings by intensifying the effect of horror and manifesting notions about demonic liminality. Keywords: necromancy, Caravaggio, horror and terror, demon’s corporeality, demonology

A youthful witch, depicted half-length, makes irresistible play for the viewer’s attention, a dramatic expression of astonishment, fear, and disgust overspreading her features (fig. 82). Startled, abruptly, in the midst of enacting a magical ritual upon a human skull atop a bowl of live coals, and with an occult manual at her elbow, she turns towards the viewer her heavily contorted, flushed visage: the deeply furrowed brow, heavily knitted eyebrows, and wide-eyed grimace indicate a heightened psychological state. Her abrupt movement causes her breasts to spill out of her dress, which falls down to expose her shoulder as well. It takes a moment to identify the cause of her horror: a pair of long and articulated black claws irrupt into the pictorial space from the left. This small canvas, hanging in the Pinacoteca Civica in Ancona, and a larger panel version, formerly owned by the Maurizio Canesso Gallery in Paris and now held in a private collection (fig. 83), have been attributed to the Roman painter Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652) or to an anonymous artist dubbed in recent decades “Pseudo-Caroselli.” Adaptations of this dramatic scene, in which a male magician

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_ch05

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Figure 82. Pseudo-Caroselli, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, ca. 1625, oil on canvas, 44 × 35 cm. Pinacoteca Civica Francesco Podesti, Ancona. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

replaces the female witch, were painted by Pietro Paolini from Lucca (1603–81; fig. 84) and by the Haarlem native Pieter van Laer (1599–ca.1642; fig. 85). The four paintings (in addition to two copies of Paolini’s painting 1), collectively denoted 1

Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 192n. 22.

A Visit from the Devil 

Figure 83. Angelo Caroselli, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, ca. 1625, oil on panel, 65 × 61 cm. Private collection (formerly Maurizio Canesso Gallery, Paris). Photo: The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

here Witch Alarmed by a Devil given their cohesion as a group, introduce a unique iconography developed during the artists’ sojourns in Rome in the 1620s and 1630s. The present discussion calls for the clarification of a set of premises at the outset in order to set aside possible misconceptions. The claws do not represent an abstract form of evil, nor do they belong to a generic monster, but rather to a devil—not necessarily the Devil (Satan) himself, but one of his demonic minions. To attest the identity of the devil, Van Laer inscribed the Italian verse “Il diavolo no burla”—the devil does not jest—on the musical score unfurling conspicuously in the central foreground (fig. 85). Loredana Lorizzo argues that Witch Alarmed by a Devil can be interpreted as the protagonist’s nightmare, recalling Leonello Spada’s drawing,

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Figure 84. Pietro Paolini, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, early 1630s, oil on canvas, 70 × 93 cm. Cavallini-Sgarbi Collection, Ferrara. Photo: Maidun Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

where the surrogate figure of the artist is beset by an apparitional witch-hag (fig. 9).2 The comparison with Spada’s drawing is inevitable thanks in large part to thematic resemblance, namely, a transitory moment of a wrenching pursuit. However, the sole key to the spectral nature of Spada’s hag is through the text of the personal correspondence that accompanies the drawing. By contrast, Witch Alarmed by a Devil bears no textual or visual indication that the depicted experience is illusory or insubstantial, or that the devil is a figment of the witch’s imagination. Thus understood, Witch Alarmed by a Devil marks the terrifying peak of the vortex of emotion believed to govern the precarious relationship between a witch and the Devil, ranging from adoration and lust to rage and fear, as she becomes a victim where once she has been an accomplice.3 Witch Alarmed by a Devil broke new ground in the long-standing pictorial conventions governing witchcraft imagery in early modern Europe. Casting the 2 Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 190. 3 On the emotional relationship of the witch and the Devil, see Roper, Oedipus and the Devil; Stephens, Demon Lovers; Roper, Witch Craze, 82–103; Kounine, “Satanic Fury”; and Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions.

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Figure 85. Pieter van Laer, Witch Alarmed by a Devil, late 1630s, oil on canvas, 80 × 115 cm. Leiden Collection, New York. Photo: courtesy of The Leiden Collection.

witch as a vulnerable victim, shocked by the impinging devil, overturns the prevailing stereotype of the cruel and powerful witch who projects supreme fear and hostility. The focus on a young practitioner, fitting for the role of an inexperienced magician who is oblivious to the dire consequences of sealing a damnable pact with the Devil, is at variance with the standard scene of diabolical witchcraft, dominated by old witches. The half-length, single-f igure composition further departs from the norm in that the abiding majority of scenes of witchcraft show full-length representations of their protagonists. Moreover, the radically cropped devil, reduced to a pair of clawed extremities, stands resolutely apart from the myriad representations of fully fledged devils appearing as hybrid monsters or in various other whimsical guises. Notwithstanding this rich vein of iconographical innovation, meager critical attention has been paid to Witch Alarmed by a Devil. The conjectural attribution to artists of lower rank and the relative inaccessibility of three out of the four works, held in private collections, may explain this scholarly lacuna.4 By and large, existing 4 Evidently, only in the mid-1980s were the paintings of Caroselli and Van Laer first associated with one another; Roma ermetica, n.p.; and Catalano, “Oltre Salvator Rosa,” 99–100. Paolini’s painting in the Cavallini-Sgarbi collection was unearthed as late as 2005; Sgarbi, Il male, 144.

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studies address problems of attribution and recognize the impact of Caravaggio’s works, especially Boy Bitten by a Lizard and Medusa.5 In terms of iconography, art historians have focused on deciphering the function and symbolism of the array of instruments to which the magicians resort, and imparted allegorical meanings to some aspects in the paintings.6 My first objective in the present chapter is to offer a comprehensive examination of the paintings of a depth hitherto not undertaken in the literature. To this end, I investigate the paintings’ collective iconography by inquiring about the central figure’s identity and the kind of the performed magic and by offering possible frameworks through which particular viewers experienced the paintings. Conjointly, I analyze formal and compositional aspects of individual works, paying particular attention to the Caravaggesque style and the artistic invention. Finally, I reconsider certain questions pertaining to attribution, upon which the intervening discussion sheds light. This chapter also concerns the viewer’s range of reactions to Witch Alarmed by a Devil. The educated viewer is invited to meditate on the Faustian admonition highlighting the hazardous path to damnation which awaits the heretic willing to transact with the Devil to gain supernatural power. A measure of satisfaction, even Schadenfreude, would not have been unintended, given the painting’s ironical emphasis on the self-authored nature of the catastrophe: the victim’s falling prey to none other than his supernatural ally. It seems likely that at least some viewers ridiculed the naïve practitioner for trusting the Devil, the paradigmatic deceiver and traitor. While some scholars generally perceive the paintings as terrifying, others grasp them as comical, yet only rarely do they explain their grounds for subscribing to either interpretation.7 One notable exception is Alessandra Anselmi, who argues that Witch Alarmed by a Devil ought to be understood as a satire similar to Horace’s account of the witches Canidia and Sagana (Satires 1.8).8 While the two witches stand engrossed, ostensibly raising the dead from their graves, a fig-wood statue of Priapus discharges a loud flatus that scares them off. The witches’ ragged flight calls forth the reader’s laughter in the concluding line: “Away they ran into town. Then amid great laughter and mirth you might see Canidia’s teeth and Sagana’s 5 Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 114–18; Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 96; Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 178–89; Genesi, “Per una decodif ica dei dettagli magico-musicali,” 89; Anselmi, “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco,” 173; and Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene.” 6 Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 114–18; Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 178–89; and Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene.” 7 Irony and ridicule: Sgarbi, Il male, 144; comical: Segrave, “Conjuring Genius,” 194; frightening: Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene”; and Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 189–90. 8 Anselmi, “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco,” 173, who does not delve into a comparison of the paintings with the Horatian passage.

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high wig come tumbling down, and from their arms the herbs and enchanted love-knots.”9 Witch Alarmed by a Devil may call to mind this description of the hapless flight of witches threatened by an occult supernatural power when they least expect. Nevertheless, this is where the comparison ends. While in the passage the humorous effect of sudden flatulence belies the daunting magic and brings it to an end, in Witch Alarmed by a Devil the outcome of the devil’s attack is unknown. The scene lacks even the vestige of comic relief analogous to the strident Priapic fart, nor does it offer an implied escape to safety, however grotesque, to defuse the narrative suspense and afford the viewer the psychological comfort of a happy ending. This chapter aims to show that the comic interpretation is preempted and constrained by the dominant elements of horror built into the paintings by their semantic structure. The second part of the chapter argues that the extraordinary cropped-devil figure forms the emotional and intellectual crux of Witch Alarmed by a Devil. The near-total exclusion of the devil from the view but for a glimpse of his clawed extremities conceptually extends the pictorial field into the viewer’s space and heightens the fleeting climactic moment in the narrative. The devil’s advent in the lateral plane, if not directly inspired by the theatrical repertoire of the age, lends a sense of theatricality to the scene; since the character of the Devil was well-rehearsed on late medieval and early modern stages, the connection is inevitable.10 Mario Genesi goes as far as to deduce from the subject matter, and in particular from the precipitate quality of the devil’s arrival, that Van Laer was directly influenced by Christopher Marlowe’s Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.11 Moreover, the image of the truncated devil introduces a distinction between the witch, who sees the devil in his full glory, and the viewer, who is permitted to see only his advancing claws. These adroit rhetorical effects impart a visceral and cerebral experience of the devil-figure, to be explored in three stages. First, as a primary critical antecedent, I examine the cropped devil in relation to Caravaggio’s preoccupation with the permeability of the frame, whose interest in these themes was emulated by the Caravaggisti. Second, I contend that the devil’s characteristic markers, extended claws, and off-scene location serve as dominant, horror-effecting rhetorical devices. Third, I argue that his betwixt-and-between positioning offers a profound meditation of the nature of the demonic in terms of corporeality, appearance, and character. 9 Horace, Satires, 101. 10 On the Devil’s role in dramas, see Russell, Lucifer, 245–73; Velten, “Devils On and Off Stage”; and Roberts, “The Bodies of Demons.” 11 Genesi also finds a parallelism between the painting and the frontispiece image of the devil’s raised hands in the 1628 edition of Marlowe’s Faustus. Genesi, “Per una decodifica dei dettagli magico-musicali,” 95–96.

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Witchcraft and Necromancy The sole artist to whom seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historical records attribute a version of Witch Alarmed by a Devil is Angelo Caroselli. The earliest record, in the 1636 inventory of Palazzo Barberini, refers to an Englishman who donated to Cardinal Francesco Barberini “a painting of about 6 palmi [134 centimeters] around with a frame of gilded walnut depicting a necromancer (un Negromante) with a skull on top of burning coals who enchants, by the hand of Caroselli.”12 As observed in the literature, there is no perfect match of coherent features allowing us to identify the painting conclusively: the reference to a male necromancer is consistent with Pietro Paolini’s version, whereas the size and the artist’s name coincide with the Canesso panel.13 Aside from the vexed and apparently intractable question of attribution, the existence of this record necessitates an iconographic inquiry into the magician’s posited identity as a necromancer. From the late Middle Ages onward, necromantia, technically meaning divination (manteía) by invoking the spirits of the deceased (nekrós), and nigromancia, referring generally to black (negro) magic, were used interchangeably to denote magical practices involving demonic conjuration. The conflation of the two categories, the rising dead and the demonic, underlied the belief that the reanimated dead were in fact demonic forces disguised as specters.14 The first dictionary of the Italian language, Il Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612), defines negromanzia as “guessing, by way of the dead, by way of revoking souls from their corpses.”15 In a similar vein, Giulio Guastavini, in his 1592 commentary to Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, defines the negromantia practiced by the evil sorcerer Ismeno as divination via the dead, comparing him to the biblical witch of Endor and to Lucan’s Erichtho, both enchantresses (incantatrici) celebrated for magical resuscitation; at the same 12 “Donato da S[ua] Em[inen]za … Inchlese, un quadro di palmi 6 in circa con cornice di Noce dorata con un Negromante con una testa di morto sopra e con bragia di fogo che incanta mano del Caroselle.” The Barberini inventories of 1627 and 1633 record a painting of “un negromante” measuring 3 by 4 palmi (67 by 89 cm.; the Roman palmo is 22.34 cm.) though no description and attribution shows that it may be the same painting of the 1636 record. Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents, 9, Doc. 79; 32, Doc. 265 (69); and 86, III inv. 26–31.266. For the record of the painting in the 1678 inventory of Caroselli’s close acquaintance Prospero Fagnani, see Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 187. 13 Both possibilities are discussed in Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 179, 180, 182; and Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 118. Anselmi, “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco,” 173–74, identifies this picture as the Paolini painting. That an Englishman owned this painting may be related to the fact that Caroselli was invited to the court of King Charles I; see discussion below. Records mention other still unidentified works by Caroselli featuring magicians; Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 187. 14 Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 4, 19n. 14, 61. This belief has its genesis in Tertullian’s warning against taking part in activities “in which demons represent themselves as the souls of the deceased” (De anima 57.2); Marguerite Johnson’s entry “Necromancy,” in Golden, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 809. 15 Vocabolario, 553: “Indovinamento, per via di morti, per rivocar l’anime a’ lor cadaveri.”

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time, Guastavini identifies the ghost of Samuel (invoked by the witch of Endor) as the Devil, thereby changing the complexion of Ismeno’s conjuration to the outright demonic.16 Necromancy and witchcraft were both condemned by the Roman Church as heresy and apostasy, whose practitioners rejected their Christian faith to enter into a compact with the Devil in exchange for supernatural powers.17 The two categories of sorcery were held to be distinct. Necromancers were typically literate men (especially clerics), and their knowledge was obtained from occult books. Witches, on the other hand, could be male or female, had recourse to oral spells rather than printed matter, and engaged in physical labor and the manipulation of everyday accouterments.18 The point, however, must not be overstressed: in practice, these categories were nothing short of permeable, and the segregation into “learned” and “popular” magic proved to be inaccurate in light of the overlapping and fusion between the two forms of magical knowledge.19 A stark difference between witches and necromancers arose from their position in the hierarchy of power overtopped by the Devil, succinctly explained by King James VI and I in his Daemonologie (1597): “The witches are servants only and slaves to the devil, but that necromancers are his masters and commanders.”20 Yet in both cases, the affiliation with the Devil, whether in the relation of subservience or sovereignty, brought inherent dangers. Francesco Maria Guazzo, an exorcist friar and a consultant to witchcraft trials in Milan, asserts in his Compendium maleficarum (A Summary of Witches, published in 1608, amplified edition in 1626), that the pacts concluded between witches and the Devil are “not only vain and useless; they are also dangerous and immeasurably pernicious.”21 As evidence, Guazzo recounts cases of witches and conjurers—most famous among them, Zoroaster, Simon Magus, and Johann Faust—who were maimed and killed by their much-worshipped Devil.22 Necromancers, whose command over the Devil was, in practice, far from magisterial, had to take precautions against the latter’s outbreaks of cruelty, such as the necessity to remain confined within their magic circles.23 16 Guastavini, Discorsi et annotationi, 43–44. See also Clark, “Tasso and the Literature of Witchcraft,” 4–5. 17 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 38–39. 18 Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 42–49; and Zika, “Medieval Magicians as People of the Book,” 250. On clerics practicing necromancy in Italy, see Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 204–31; and Herzig, “The Demons and the Friars.” 19 Duni, Under the Devil’s Spell, 42. 20 King James VI and I, Daemonologie, 9. 21 Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 17. 22 Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 18–19, 160–62. 23 Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 227–31. Johannes Hartlieb, in Book of All Forbidden Arts (1456), notes that the Devil only pretends to be dominated by the necromancer while in fact he is content with stealing his soul from God; Kieckhefer, Hazards of the Dark Arts, 33–34.

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One may reasonably wonder what aspects identify the spell casters in Witch Alarmed by a Devil as necromancers and whether the identification is in any way robust. The devil’s precipitous arrival upon the scene may well be interpreted as the consequence of a successful invocatory magic; indeed, the magical accoutrements scattered about are consistent with this hypothesis, showing that the action takes place mid-spell. Yet the magician’s stupefied, appalled countenance at the arrival of the ghastly uninvited figure belies the conjecture. Further clues may be gleaned from the presence of magic books in three of the paintings.24 Books were considered an essential resource of necromancy; yet, their presence in the paintings is insufficient to justify the hypothesis that a necromantic magic is at work given that in seventeenth-century art, witches were likewise depicted in compositions featuring books.25 Far more illuminating is the image of the human skull smoldering on a bed of live coals. As individual element, it constitutes the sole magical prop appearing in all four paintings. Moreover, aside from the protagonist, it is the sole compositional constituent mentioned in the Barberini inventory. As discussed earlier, bones, skulls, and human and animal body parts figured frequently in scenes of witchcraft as ingredients of potions or instruments for performing magic, indicating the brutality of witches and their inherent association with death. In this instance, the prominence of the skull and its special handling suggest a particular function. Skull necromancy was an ancient practice for reanimating the dead, whereby an animal or human skull was placed on lit burners while the voice of the dead was coaxed forth by an assistant concealed in another room.26 Martín Del Rio’s Investigations into Magic (1599–1600) lists among the techniques of divination necessitated by an invocation of the devil a divining by means of a head or a skull, a process called “cephalomancy”: “The Germans used to do this with an ass’s head roasted over hot coals. In later times, the people of Lombardy used a goat’s head to which they paid divine honors.”27 It was believed that the smoldering skull would oblige the audience by providing answers to the necromancer’s questions. In Witch Alarmed by a Devil the implied soundscape of bone sizzling and splintering in the fire and 24 The scribbles in Paolini’s thick volume are illegible. Van Laer includes three tomes, one of which shows a sketched pentagram and a pin stuck into a red-colored heart-shape. The volume in the Ancona canvas brandishes alchemical runes and a magic circle, in the center of which burns a lit candle. The alchemical signs are decoded in Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 114. 25 Zika, “Medieval Magicians as People of the Book,” 253. 26 Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 208–16, esp. 210. In Apuleius (Apologia 34) the human skull is used for the invocation of the dead; Ogden, 202–5. 27 Del Rio, Investigations into Magic, 159, repeats almost verbatim François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel 3:25; Rabelais, The Complete Works, 329. Del Rio’s treatise went through several reprints, including a Venetian one in 1606.

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the anticipated off-stage voicings of the dead heighten the multisensory quality of the scene. The nature and process of cephalomancy may account for the devil’s unexpectedly dropping in upon the hapless magician. Johannes Hartlieb, whose Book of All Forbidden Arts (1456) warns against the folly, immorality, and heresy of magic and superstition, abominates the “evil, reprehensible deception in the art of nigromancy that involves a dead head that one conjures, with fine aromatic suffumigation and candles, and then the head gives answers to questions.” Far from being master of the situation, the conjurer, oblivious to the Devil’s deception, is easy prey for the latter’s skullduggery: “You think the head answers, but it is the evil Devil within it who answers you. He often tells you what is true, to seduce and mislead you.”28 The Canesso panel (fig. 83) signals the devil’s role in cephalomancy by making the dark claws reach out to wrest possession of the skull from the conjurer. While in all four instantiations of Witch Alarmed by a Devil the magicians appear to engage in necromancy, in the Ancona and Canesso paintings necromancy intersects with witchcraft. In the background of the Ancona painting (fig. 82), an old witch, shown with the stereotypical withered chest and disordered tresses, is on the cusp of absconding with a snatched infant. The barely discernible inscription “crudeltà” on the rim of the front pedestal refers in this context not to the devil but to the old witch, given that the vice of Crudelitas (Cruelty) was traditionally personified by a woman maltreating an infant.29 On the distant left of the Canesso panel, a coven of five naked witches congregates under an outsized crescent moon: in the unfolding Satanic rites, the uppermost witch plunges an innocent babe headlong into a boiling cauldron, while another is braining hers by slamming it full-force against the ground, a mere upside-down ragdoll flourished limply over her shoulder. In both the Canesso panel and the Ancona canvas an idolatrous belief in the Devil accompanies the practice of witchcraft. In this transaction, Devil-worship buys the witches magical power: the Devil potentiates their spells in exchange for the witches’ souls and Christian apostasy, whereas the sacrificial infants, by preference unbaptized newborns, bear witness to the successful destruction of 28 Kieckhefer, Hazards of the Dark Arts, 42. 29 Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 17–18, associates the inscription “crudeltà” with Ripa, Iconologia, 83, where this vice is epitomized by a woman drowning a baby or laughing at the sight of a burning house in which mortally wounded children are trapped. In Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of the Bad Government (1338) in Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, the female personification of Cruelty holds a serpent in one hand and chokes a baby with the other. In Giovanni del Biondo’s panel (ca. 1380) in the Florentine Duomo, Crudelitas, trampled by Saint Zenobius, is represented as a woman gnawing a child’s naked body. In Maerten de Vos’s engraving of Cruelty (1577), a woman offers bread and fish to a dog, and snake coiled around a rock to a child. For the relief sculpture of a melancholic woman in the Ancona canvas, see Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 117; and chapter 4.

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Figure 86. Witches Sacrificing an Infant to the Devil, woodcut, in Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, Milan, 1608. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

God’s creation with the Devil’s aid. In line with the distinction between explicit and implicit diabolical pacts posited by the Roman Inquisition, hinging on the degree of intentionality involved in the transaction, the inclusion in the background of overtly Devil-worshipping witches imparts a similar intentional engagement and knowledge to the main figure.30 As the paintings caution, even the most devoted of witches, placating Satan by means of the cruelest acts, are far from immune to the unpredictable lethality unleashed by their supernatural patron. By contrast, Paolini and Van Laer did not introduce Devil-worship into their paintings. In keeping with the stereotypical image of the necromancer, the magician is alone in his study with his spells; however, he departs from the common image of the necromancer as a venerable man sporting a long mantle and commandingly summoning evil spirits with the aid of a book, wand, and magic circle alone (fig. 6).31 30 On explicit and implicit pacts, see Del Rio, Investigations into Magic, 155–56; Tedeschi, “The Question of Magic and Witchcraft,” 97–98; and Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, chap. 2. 31 The encounter with a single devil in Witch Alarmed by a Devil recalls illustrations showing a devil standing outside the perimeter of the magic circle that confines the necromancer: Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, figs. 2.1, 2.15, 2.17, and the frontispiece of Marlowe’s Faustus in the 1628 edition.

A Visit from the Devil 

Figure 87. The Devil Striking Witches out of the Book of Life, woodcut, in Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, Milan, 1608. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

To compound the category-blurring effects, Van Laer fused necromancy with alchemy and witchcraft in the depiction, alongside the skull, of a miscellany of ingredients and paraphernalia, including vessels containing liquids, kitchen implements, a glass of worms, a candle, seeds, a spider, and a ceremonial knife called athame.32 Given this profusion of mixed signif iers, we cannot exclude the possibility that these men are stregoni, male witches. Our biased view that only women were believed to practice witchcraft is subverted by inquisitorial records and demonological texts.33 Consider, for example, the eight woodcuts in Guazzo’s Compendium maleficarum illustrating several necessary rites for joining the fellowship of the Devil (figs. 86 and 87). In a simple formulaic composition, the left-positioned Devil haughtily commands a group of richly attired young heretics on the right; they urge the Devil to strike them out of the Book of Life and inscribe 32 For the magical utilization of these items, see Berry Drago, Painted Alchemists, 190; and Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene.” 33 On male witches, see Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law; Apps and Gow, Male Witches; Rowlands, Witchcraft and Masculinities; Schulte, Man as Witch; and Kounine, Imagining the Witch.

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them instead in the Book of Death, and they sacrifice to the Devil an infant they had killed. Remarkably, in most of the woodcuts the male witches outnumber the female ones. From this analysis, it becomes clear that the prototype of the wielder of magic in Witch Alarmed by a Devil conflates the title of “witch” and the “necromancer,” a fusion of categories that reflects the collapse of strict definitions of magic and their classification under the aegis of witchcraft.34 For the sake of brevity and clarity, albeit at the cost of some anachronistic categorization, the nomenclature in this chapter shall refer to female magicians as “witches,” to convey their overt association with diabolical witchcraft, and to male magicians as “necromancers,” as befits the usage of the word in early modern Italy demonstrated in the Barberini records of the version attributed to Caroselli.

The Cardinal and the Englishman Some possible contextual frameworks of viewing that refer to the subject matter and moral lesson of Witch Alarmed by a Devil may be outlined at this early stage of discussion. The 1636 inventory of the Barberini collection identif ies two consecutive owners of Caroselli or Paolini’s version: Cardinal Francesco Barberini and the inchlese who presented the Cardinal with the painting. It may be surmised that each man’s distinct set of occupations, interests, and cultural milieux might have furnished private reasons for delectation in relation to the artwork. For the Englishman, Witch Alarmed by a Devil not implausibly called to mind the cohort of magicians and devils in the English plays of 1590–1620, most famously, Christopher Marlowe’s Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, appearing in the quintessential editions of 1604 and the enlarged 1616 quarto (and reprinted copiously thereafter). Most vividly, the witch or necromancer recoiling from snatching claws and poised on the cusp of flight ironically evokes the key moment in Marlowe’s play, when a still-untainted Faustus is heedless to the divine warning, “Homo, fuge!” (Fly, human!), which is inscribed on his arm and exhorts him to flee from Lucifer before the pact’s conclusion. Aspects of the morality tale, culminating in the celebrated scene of the dragging down to Hell of a terrified Doctor by its infernal minions, reverberate in the painting’s similar choreography of the devil and the damned. If the Barberini version was painted by Caroselli, its possession by an Englishman is telling. One of Caroselli’s English admirers was none other than King Charles I, whose Roman agent offered Caroselli a generous stipend to relocate to England, 34 Zika, “Medieval Magicians as People of the Book,” 252.

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an opportunity the artist rejected (opening the way for Orazio Gentileschi to take his place). Marta Rossetti speculates that Caroselli’s magic scenes must have been an eye-catcher for a sovereign whose father, King James VI and I, wrote the Daemonologie in 1597.35 Barberini, into whose hands the painting passed next, would have been wellinformed about juristic developments related to witch prosecutions in his capacity as Cardinal-Padrone (a papal “prime minister”) to his uncle Pope Urban VIII and, from 1633 until his death in 1679, as Grand Inquisitor. After 1580 and well into the early decades of the seventeenth century, the number of witch trials across the Italian peninsula had increased, yet only a handful ended in executions: two were carried out in Rome in 1630 and 1635.36 In a 1623 papal bull, Pope Gregory XV announced that witches whose maleficium caused death would be executed, and those whose spells inflicted illness or damaged crops would be imprisoned for life—with no exceptions, even for first-time offenders.37 Tempering fervor with a degree of leniency, during the 1620s the Roman Inquisition dispatched a set of instructions introducing judicial moderation into the regulations governing the prosecution of witches to bishops and inquisitors under its jurisdiction. Thus, Cardinal Giovanni Garcia Millino sent a brief manual to the Bishop of Lodi in 1624, adding the mitigating comment that witchcraft is “a crime difficult to verify, and in which a great role is played by the frivolity and flightiness of women, and the treachery of the devil who is the teacher and father of lies.”38 Similarly, Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia wrote an authoritative text for Roman inquisitors circa 1625, in which he endorsed moderation in the denunciations of witches at the same time as reaffirming that witchcraft could be accomplished only through the forging of a formal compact with the Devil.39 The lenient way was also Cardinal Barberini’s, in his post as Grand Inquisitor. 40 The painting of the Witch Alarmed by a Devil in Barberini’s possession may well have entrained an avid Cardinal and his educated peers into polemical debates over the veracity of witches and the role of the Devil in their diabolical rites, no less than the question of condign punishment for the crime of witchcraft itself.

35 Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 181, 185. King James VI of Scotland published Daemonologie before he became King James I of England upon the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603. 36 Herzig, “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy,” 257–58; and Duni, “Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting,” 83–85. 37 Herzig, “Witchcraft Prosecutions in Italy,” 257. 38 Tedeschi, “The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft,” 164. The manual is titled Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum, et maleficiorum (Instruction for Proceeding with Cases of Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Harmful Magic). 39 Tedeschi, “The Question of Magic and Witchcraft”; and Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, chap. 2. 40 Ginzburg, The Night Battles, 125–28.

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Novel Iconography in a Caravaggesque Manner Witch Alarmed by a Devil was addressed to an audience seeking to play a game of interpretation upon new subject matter, one that demanded no familiarity with rare mythological or arcane texts but could function sui generis and be solved independently of ambient lore. Yet even unorthodox themes frequently relied upon the rudiments of a recognizable iconography to facilitate the viewer’s access to the new pictorial terrain and ensure a pleasurable challenge. 41 As Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood observe, “The new work, the innovation, is legitimated by the chain of works leading back to an authoritative type.”42 Pseudo-Caroselli, Caroselli, Paolini, and Van Laer reinvented the works of Caravaggio (1571–1610), an artist whose fame and sway over the Roman art market cannot be overstated. Appealing to Caravaggio was the best way to add luster to their paintings in the eyes of the Roman clients who craved for Caravaggesque works. Sophisticated art collectors would have taken pleasure in discovering and reflecting upon the meaning of implicit references to, and subtle adjustments of, Caravaggio’s oeuvre. The Caravaggesque style pervades the four versions of Witch Alarmed by a Devil in several notable ways. The rendition of a half-length figure behind a table laden with still-life objects in the immediate foreground recalls Caravaggio’s early canvases, while the entire scene is steeped in light-and-shade contrasts, an atmosphere inspired by the master’s celebrated later style. The assimilation of Caravaggio’s late work, in particular his exploitation of tenebrism, into compositions modeled on his early studio scenes conforms to the influential style dubbed the “Manfrediana methodus” after Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622), the artist who developed the fusion. 43 Equally indebted to Caravaggio are the display of emotion through heightened expression and the demonstrative positioning of the body in response to a shocking occurrence. Setting aside the tyrannies of market and trend, we may take it that each artist thrust his painting into an innovative dialogue with Caravaggio’s repertoire, involving formal, compositional, iconographical, and symbolical levels, intended to convey the narrative in the most effective manner (a thesis to be explored at length below). The suite of replicative versions of Witch Alarmed by a Devil evidences the appeal possessed by iconographical novelty for artists and viewers alike. The possibility of invention through repetition gave rise to a heated debate in Rome in 1624, when Giovanni Lanfranco attacked Domenichino for stealing the main idea of Agostino 41 On Roman collectors’ special proclivity for unorthodox themes disguised in traditional iconography and familiar style, see Reinhardt, “The Roman Art Market”; and Hoare, “Salvator Rosa,” 437. 42 Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 11. 43 The term was coined by Joachim von Sandrart. Paolini’s adoption of Manfrediana methodus was noted by Savina, “Pietro Paolini’s Negromante.”

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Carracci’s Last Communion of Saint Jerome.44 In the seventeenth-century conception of replicative art, the Witch Alarmed by a Devil would have been deemed novità, a term that subsumed not only work dealing with purely novel subjects, but also the reworkings of old subjects in new forms. 45 In hinging on a previous version of Witch Alarmed by a Devil, each artist aimed to pay homage to his predecessor while concurrently aspiring to demonstrate his own originality and artistic prowess. The viewer’s familiarity with the prototype paintings may not have contributed new interpretations directly, but it may have instigated a paragone (comparison) between the two versions. To cast light upon the role of replication in the creation of artworks, I offer a plausible chronological order for the Witch Alarmed by a Devil suite, whose attribution and dating are anything but settled, showing how each artist emulated his predecessor in the series by mining Caravaggio’s paintings independently so as to clarify the narrative and, occasionally, to compose a witty, satirical work.

Pseudo-Caroselli The attribution of the Ancona and Canesso paintings to Angelo Caroselli has been the subject of a lively debate. Several works attributed to Caroselli were in fact painted by another artist, dubbed by scholars “Pseudo-Caroselli” and variously identified as a Flemish, Dutch, or Italian painter who attended Caroselli’s workshop.46 Vittorio Sgarbi makes a strong case on stylistic and thematical grounds for ascribing approximately thirty works, including the Arezzo pendants of Circe (figs. 54 and 55) and the Ancona and Canesso paintings, to Pseudo-Caroselli. On the whole, the anonymous artist’s works configure women as allegorical subjects, courtesans, and witches. Sumptuously dressed and bejeweled, these are over-sexualized objects of desire, beckoning the viewer with bedroom eyes, bared shoulders, and ample cleavage. Incorrect anatomy, exaggerated facial expressions, and excessive theatrical gestures impart a heightened, distorted effect to the representation.47 Marta Rossetti, 44 The attack and the following debate are profoundly investigated in Cropper, The Domenichino Affair. See also Loh, “New and Improved,” 495–96. 45 Loh, “New and Improved,” 493–97; and Cropper, The Domenichino Affair, 118. 46 The misunderstanding begun when Roberto Longhi attributed some paintings by this anonymous painter to Caroselli. The heterogeneity of Caroselli’s works was nonetheless noticed by scholars, including Laura Laureati, who coined the term “Pseduo-Caroselli” in 1989. For a review of the historiography and possible identifications, see Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 109; and Sgarbi, Pseudo Caroselli, 7–11. An old writing on the back of the Ancona canvas names Angelo Caroselli. For the attribution of the two paintings to Pseudo-Caroselli: Marini, “Gli esordi del Caravaggio,” 68, 74n. 85; and Salerno, “Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli,” 353–54. For their attribution to Caroselli: Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 114–18; and Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 96. 47 Sgarbi, Pseudo Caroselli.

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for her part, argues that the Ancona painting may have been executed by either Caroselli or Pseudo-Caroselli, either collaboratively or independently influenced by one another. 48 Endorsing Sgarbi’s conclusion, I find in the Ancona canvas many of Pseudo-Caroselli’s distinctive characteristics, whether or not Caroselli’s influence can be ascertained; however, as I later explain, I consider the Canesso panel to have been produced principally, if not independently, by Caroselli. Although the precise chronological order of the two paintings cannot be established—it remains possible that the conception of the paintings was a collaborative act, carried out individually by each artist at roughly the same time—it is my conjecture that the Ancona canvas was the earlier given that its composition is neither as unified nor natural as that found in the Canesso panel. The Ancona canvas (fig. 82) features a young witch whose sartorial presentation heightening an already overblown sexuality closely recalls other female figures conceivably painted by Pseudo-Caroselli. 49 As usual, the attire is opulent, almost to caricature; the witch’s dark-blue robes, pinned with a magnificent brooch and worn over an embroidered white camicia, manage to restrain neither the swelling bosom nor the bare shoulder. On her furrowed brow she wears a string of cascading pearls; a striped helmet of precious rubies and other gems crowns the upswept hair. These constituents mark the figure as a direct descendant of the family of beautiful, erotically charged literary witches, from Circe to Armida, common in Italian art. At the same time, the figure is recontextualized to denote diabolical witchcraft; the overt signifiers include the babe-snatching witch in the background, the references to the necromantic rite she is caught performing, and of course, the demonic claws making a grab at her.50 As evinced in this painting, Pseudo-Caroselli merged two different artistic styles. The architectural backdrop, showing a complex interior of arched doorways, monumental columns, and large stone-carved figures in relief, seems to have been inspired by the fantastic architectural perspectives and pagan ruins that French artists Didier Barra (1590–1656) and François de Nomé (1593–after 1620) produced during their sojourn in Naples.51 The foreground, however, is modeled on Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard (fig. 88). On a vertical, albeit considerably smaller canvas, 48 Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 187. Many of the paintings attributed to Caroselli in her “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” including the Arezzo pendants of Circe, are excluded from her later comprehensive catalogue of seventy-eight works by the artist. 49 Sgarbi, Pseudo Caroselli, figs. 15, 18, 21, 23, 24. 50 On paintings of diabolical witchcraft practiced by beautiful witches inspired by literary enchantresses Circe, Alcina, and Armida, see Anselmi, “Dipinti a soggetto magico-stregonesco,” 173; and Segrave, “Conjuring Genius,” 74. 51 The two artists were known under the shared name Monsù Desiderio. This visual similarity supports the identification of Pseudo-Caroselli as an artist from the circle of De Nomé; Sgarbi, Pseudo Caroselli, 10.

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Figure 88. Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, ca. 1594, oil on canvas, 66 × 49.5 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

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Pseudo-Caroselli depicted a half-length figure behind a table on which a still life is arranged in close proximity to the picture plane. The postures adopted by both codify astonishment and recoil from an immediate causal stimulus—a biting lizard in one and a terrifying devil in the other. Positionally, each figure holds itself perpendicular to the plane, head twisted to the right, shoulder painfully hunched in apprehension, averting the gaze. In each canvas, the left hand, fingers dramatically fanning out, virtually touches the picture edge. And in each, abruptly turning away causes the white undergarment to slip off the exposed right shoulder, picked out and further emphasized by the directional light. Another common aspect is the anguished cast of their features, showing a distorted mouth, furrowed brow, and painfully knit eyebrows.52 Remarkably, much of the boy’s affected and ambiguous expression and gestures carries over to the witch.53 She is, apparently, in no great hurry to effect an escape, as if rendered paralyzed, unable to appreciate the urgency of her situation, preferring to demonstrate her anguish over to the viewer’s side. Her upright pose, emphasized by the picture’s vertical format, can be justified as a sign of confusion, “making an act of wanting to flee, and not knowing where,” as Giovanni Bonifacio describes those experiencing terrore in his L’arte de’ cenni (The Art of Gestures) of 1616.54 For all that, the attitude she strikes seems a whit too demonstrative, too studiously composed, as if she ranges herself on purpose, intending titillatingly to perform fear rather than allow it to determine her actions. Preferring to lay stress on narrative progression by freezing the devil’s motion in the act of clutching at his prey, Pseudo-Caroselli makes no explicit reference to physical pain, unavoidable in the case of the boy with the bitten finger. In accordance with the logical left-to-right narrative flow, the devil breaks into the pictorial field from the left, which is also the side of the scene’s illumination. The cause-and-effect 52 The witch and the boy enact a series of movements conventionally registering astonishment—involving specifically the hands, shoulder, and mouth as the chosen vehicles for such expressions. This recalls the way Leonardo describes Andrew on the preparatory study of The Last Supper, as one who “with hands spread open shows his palms and shrugs his shoulders up to his ears, making a mouth of astonishment”; Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant “Last Supper,” 97–100. 53 Gregori, “Boy Bitten by a Lizard,” 236, among others, has argued that this painting demonstrates Caravaggio’s interest in studying extreme emotions from nature. However, the boy’s expression is undeniably ambiguous. It is unclear whether he is surprised, in pain, disgusted, or all at once. Ebert-Schifferer, Caravaggio, 85; and Franklin, “You Know that I Love You,” 133. 54 Bonifacio, L’arte de’ cenni, 469: “The gesture therefore of being frightened by trembling, and making an act of wanting to flee, and not knowing where, and showing fear of not being in any safe place, will accentuate this terror” (“Il gesto adunque d’essere spaventato tremando, e facendo atto di voler fuggire, e non saper dove, e mostrar di temer di non esser in alcun luogo sicuro, accennerà questo terrore, che sarà argomento d’haver commossa la mente, e la conscienza perturbata, per haver commessa qualche sceleratezza”).

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sequence is nevertheless confounded, as the witch transfixes the viewer obliquely, while the portrait format de-emphasizes the dynamic momentum of the devil’s penetration of the frame. The dimmed visibility of the claws further suppresses a directional left-to-right viewing, compelling the viewer, first, to absorb the terrified witch, and only then to attempt to spot the cause of her mental state. A viewer of the Ancona canvas familiar with Boy Bitten by a Lizard—a painting that “made his [Caravaggio’s] reputation grow notably all over Rome”55—must have taken pleasure in reflecting on the similarities and differences between the two works. In portraying a boy bitten by a lizard, Caravaggio perhaps meant to satirize the established pedagogical trope of boys bitten by poisonous scorpions and crayfish, as in Sofonisba Anguissola’s Boy Bitten by a Crayfish (ca. 1554, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples).56 The substitution of a lizard with nothing less outrageous than a rogue devil reinstitutes the deadliness of the menace; moreover, in rendering the cause-and-effect chain coherent, if supernaturally grounded, it justifies the witch’s exaggerated reaction. A learned viewer would have been primed by prior exposure to Caravaggio’s masterpiece to tease out symbolical and allegorical parallels between the two paintings. The myriad negative allegorical meanings attached to the mythical archetype of the lizard—“deceit, a cold heart, jealousy, death, wrath, fire, passion, or warmth in love”57—are transferrable to the devil-figure without further ado. A plausible argument securing the analogy between lizard and devil fastens upon their similar roles in a moralizing reading of the two paintings in regard to deception and the credulity of youth. Catherine Puglisi interprets the bite of the hidden lizard as a metaphor for the bitter knowledge awaiting the unsuspecting youth, or for the painful, albeit inevitable, passage from innocence to experience.58 In a similar vein, the devil’s unexpected advent upon the scene may be thought to represent a predictable disenchantment for the witch. The fragility of worldly existence, underscored by the boy’s flicker of pain, reverberates anew in the flash of the devil’s claws.

Angelo Caroselli The Canesso scene (fig. 83), painted on a squarish panel of more than double the size of the Ancona canvas, lacks, as we shall see momentarily, certain traits identified with Pseudo-Caroselli’s body of work. It is therefore more likely to be the work of 55 This assertion was made by Joachim von Sandrart; quote from Hibbard, Caravaggio, 377. 56 Puglisi, Caravaggio, 61; and Ebert-Schifferer, Caravaggio, 80–81. 57 Spear, “The Critical Fortune,” 26. 58 Puglisi, Caravaggio, 65.

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Figure 89. Agostino Tassi, Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft, ca. 1625, oil on canvas, 63.2 × 74.5 cm. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Angelo Caroselli carried out after his return to Rome from a sojourn in Naples (1616–23) and, in all probability, formatively influenced by Pseudo-Caroselli.59 Caroselli conveyed a menacing atmosphere more effectively than Pseudo-Caroselli by omitting the superfluous elements seen in the Ancona canvas, such as the vignetted palatial architecture, carved reliefs, theatrical curtain, and table with still life, thus simplifying the magic-denoting paraphernalia down to the essential. To unify the composition, he opted for dark tonalities that enhance the daunting atmosphere and highlight the preternatural drama. The juxtaposition of a single, looming witch-figure in the foreground and a miniaturized assembly of witches in the offing calls to mind the seventeenthcentury painted adaptation of Lo stregozzo, depicting an elaborate sabbath in the background with naked broom- and goat-riding witches dancing and prostrating 59 Caroselli is last documented in Naples in 1623 and first recorded back in Rome in 1626. Papi, “L’enigma Caroselli,” 128.

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before Satan beneath a luminous crescent moon (f ig. 19). Another example is Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft (fig. 89), produced by Agostino Tassi (1578–1644) around 1625, possibly for Scipione Borghese. Tassi reinvented Dosso’s Sorceress, by that time at the Borghese collection (fig. 2).60 The turbaned sorceress, a twin of Dosso’s figure, is seated within her magical circle with a tablet propped in her lap and dipping a torch into a lit coal-brazier. Also extracted from Dosso are the companion hound, sagely inclining his noble head, and a tree festooned with discarded armor plates, figurines, and a mirror. Dosso’s three knights lying upon the grass are replaced by a couple of witches engaged in concocting a magical brew and witnessed by two figures on the remote bank of the pond. As Patrizia Cavazzini argues, this type of composition was familiar to Caroselli, who would have been exposed to this or comparable works by Tassi, his collaborator in the 1630s, if not before.61 Caroselli’s witch fills the height of the panel and appears somewhat less artificially choreographed than the witch devised by Pseudo-Caroselli, wearing an embroidered camicia but without the opulent jeweled headdress and medallion brooch. She lacks the element of bodice-bursting bosom, but her bare shoulder is similarly flourished, this time in a more anatomically accurate foreshortening. Unlike the Ancona witch, who averts her gaze from the object of her terror yet stays composedly put, the latter’s flight from dread is naturalistically rendered. Her tensed body is twisted away from the devil in the correct direction allowing her to escape, palms outstretched in a rhetorical gesture of aversion and fear.62 Yet her gaze remains riveted on the dreadful sight meeting her. The direction of her eyes, dilated with horror, is somewhat ambiguous, running past the pair of skull-scrabbling claws and fixed a little higher, perhaps on the unseen head of the devil. The arrangement of her body recalls Titian’s Saint Margaret and the Dragon at the Prado (fig. 90), which Caroselli could have known via Luca Bertelli’s engraving. According to legend, Margaret, swallowed by a dragon, is able to emerge unharmed from its abdomen by performing the signum crucis. Titian’s saint, stepping over the body of the dragon and looking down with apprehension as the dragon extends a black claw to grasp and restrain her by the thigh, brandishes a cross in one hand and reaches out to safety with the other. The prominence of the dragon’s massively 60 Cavazzini, Agostino Tassi, 63–64; and Cavazzini, “Towards a Chronology of Agostino Tassi,” 407. 61 Cavazzini, Agostino Tassi, 74. Caroselli became Tassi’s faithful collaborator in 1631 and lived in his house for several years; Cavazzini, “Agostino Tassi and the Organization of His Workshop”; and Rossetti, “L’arcano Angelo Caroselli,” 138–41. 62 John Bulwer explains the adverse palms in his 1644 treatise on gestures as an expression of “detestation, despite, and exprobation”; Bulwer, Chirologia and Chironomia, 187, 193 (gesture W). Ripa, Iconologia, 339, describes Paura as a woman “in the act of fleeing with fear, and with her hands raised high” (“starà in atto di fuggire con spavento, et con le mani alzate in alto”).

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Figure 90. Titian, Saint Margaret and the Dragon, ca. 1565, oil on canvas, 209 × 183 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado.

clawed paw, its salience emphasized by the contrast with Margaret’s bright green dress, the fire by night in the distant left, and the skull in the lower right corner deepen the analogy with the Canesso panel.63 The Canesso witch, her features set in 63 Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 181–82, compares the witch’s stance to Artemisia Gentileschi’s Susanna and the Elders (Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden) and Dosso Dossi’s Anger (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice).

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a grimace of fear, is overall a more natural figure than the grotesquely overdressed, overtly sexualized, and unnaturally staged presentation of Pseudo-Caroselli’s witch.

Pietro Paolini Pietro Paolini of Lucca was sent by his father to study art in Rome under Angelo Caroselli, and probably stayed there between 1623 and 1630. The dates are justified by the known biographical facts: his apprenticeship could not have begun before 1623, the year Caroselli most likely returned to Rome from his Neapolitan sojourn, and he was obliged to return to Lucca when his parents died of the plague in 1630.64 The painting in the Cavallini-Sgarbi collection (fig. 84) is attributed to Paolini on stylistic grounds and was most likely conceived and created under Caroselli’s supervision in the late 1620s or early 1630s.65 Paolini replicated Caroselli’s Witch Alarmed by a Devil as a rendered homage; yet he most emphatically distanced himself by choosing a necromancer as his protagonist and by making narrative-clarifying modifications in an attempt to surpass his teacher’s art. The devil’s drive to violence is borne out by the contrasting visibility of the ominous flourishing of claws on the right of the frame. A heightened dynamic is imparted to the necromancer, equally, who is shown in a flurry of motion clearly attempting to get away from the devil’s clutches. His forward-leaning, lunging stance opens a distance between himself and the object of his fear. His mouth is wrenched open by an all-but-audible scream. Turning his head over his shoulder to stare at an object in the mid-distance, his line of vision meets the top of the devil’s unseen figure. Paolini’s well-chosen horizontal format heightens the lateral viewing direction across the elongated width of the picture, albeit in a reversed line of progression. As the viewer scans the painting, he first encounters the necromancer and only afterwards the claws; at that moment, the scan switches to follow the action in reverse order, in line with the diagonal beam of light that enters from right to left. This reversed advance makes the necromancer rush towards the viewer, seeking refuge in our domain. Another way in which Paolini sought to differentiate his painting was by playing upon different aspects of the Caravaggesque style. Inspired by Caravaggio’s halflength compositions, such as Boy Bitten by a Lizard and the Louvre Fortune-Teller (fig. 12), he houses the necromancer in a shallow, indistinct space against a plain 64 Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno, 364, dates Paolini’s Roman sojourn to 1623–30, and the eighteenth-century Lucan historian Giacomo Sardini to 1619–33. Struhal, “Pittura e poesia a Lucca,” 389. 65 Savina, “Pietro Paolini’s Negromante.”

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Figure 91. Caravaggio, Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas, 323 × 343 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Photo © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images.

wall illuminated by an oblique shaft of light. To capture the pose of the dynamic flight, Paolini adapted the figure of the altar boy in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew (fig. 91), who strikes a similar turning-and-lunging pose, as he appears to tumble out of the frame though his eyes remain fixed on the martyred saint. While the boy glances down with shaded, half-lidded eyes, the necromancer gazes sideway with starting eyes, much like the Assyrian general in Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (Palazzo Barberini, Rome).

Pieter van Laer The painting in the Leiden collection (fig. 85) is commonly attributed to the Dutch artist Pieter van Laer and thought to present a self-portrait. It is dated to the 1630s, when the

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artist was living in Rome (a lengthy stay which extended from 1625 until 1639).66 As a member of the Bentvueghels (Birds of a Feather), a company of Dutch and Flemish artists who lived in the vicinity of Piazza di Spagna, he was celebrated for painting scenes of Roman street life. He inspired a group of followers called “Bamboccianti,” proudly taking on his nickname “Bamboccio,” or “clumsy puppet,” given to him on account of his misshapen physique. The seventeenth-century biographer Giambattista Passeri extols Van Laer for being “singular in representing the truth,” inasmuch as “his paintings seem like an open window through which his successes could be seen without any difference and alteration.”67 Witch Alarmed by a Devil—or as it is occasionally titled Self-Portrait with Magic Scene—is obviously exceptional in his oeuvre. Van Laer was undoubtedly acquainted with Paolini’s painting, from which he borrowed several elements, including the half-length figure of the escaping necromancer depicted on a horizontal format against a wall, the right-to-left pursuit emphasized by lighting pointing in the same direction, and the shape of the bony, long-nailed claws. His ambition to outshine his predecessor is evinced in the flamboyant treatment of certain elements. A portion worked up by Van Laer shows the claws, extravagant in their glossy overextension and ending in blood-red nails. Another shows the profusion of magical accouterments piled up on the table behind which the necromancer cowers. These not only outnumber the modest still-life of his predecessors but also easily fill a good half of the picture, dwarfing the necromancer with their riotously magnified proportions. This arrangement seems to parody the (by then) hackneyed display of a “foregrounded table with still life” in Caravaggesque single-figure compositions. From Caravaggio’s Musicians at the Metropolitan Museum and both versions of The Lute Player at the Metropolitan and the Hermitage, Van Laer extracted the music sheet with legible notes and verse and conspicuously displayed it in the mid-foreground. Just as the flute, violin, and music sheets in Caravaggio’s works threaten to tumble off the table and into the viewer’s sublunary realm, so in Van Laer’s painting the strip of musical notation juts out beyond the edge of the table into our space, while a cleverly positioned knife looks for a steady hand to grab it by the handle (to ply it against the devil, if needs be). On the scrappy musical score Van Laer inscribes his name and a snatch of Italian verse: “Il diavolo no burla no il diav… .”68 The tip of the projected knife points eloquently at this admonitory, albeit incomplete, message. 66 For the uncommon attribution of the Leiden canvas to his brother, Roeland van Laer, see Lorizzo, “Alessandro Rondinini e Felice Zacchia,” 63–64, who later endorses the attribution to Pieter in Giometti and Lorizzo, “Rondinini Paintings Rediscovered,” 338. 67 Passeri, Vite, 55: “Pietro certamente era singolare nel reppresentare la veritá schietta, e pura nell’esser suo. Li suoi quadri parevano una finestra aperta, per la quale si fossero veduti quelli suoi successi senza alcun divario, et alterazione.” 68 For the symbolism of the music verse, see Genesi, “Per una decodifica dei dettagli magico-musicali”; and Wuidar, “Magie démoniaque et allégorie de l’ouïe,” 106–7. The “canon a 3” inscribed on the sheet

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Figure 92. Caravaggio, Medusa, ca. 1598, oil on canvas on wooden shield, diameter 55 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

Van Laer modeled the necromancer’s horrif ied expression on Caravaggio’s Medusa (fig. 92).69 Similar to the Medusa, his necromancer is shown en face by contrast with the three-quarter profile of Paolini’s figure. In another resemblance appears to be composed either in the Phrygian mode, which descends in a sequence called a “diabolus in musica,” or as the sketch of a “crab canon” (canon cancrizans), in which two musical lines reverse each other. The crab, in its sideways scuttle, symbolizes the Devil, who runs counter to the divine plan. The verse is comparable to inscriptions in Bentveughels in a Roman Tavern, painted by Roeland van Laer around 1626, for which, see Kren, “Chi non vuol Baccho,” 67, 72–73. 69 One version of the Medusa was in Florence no later than 1598, and another probably remained in Rome; Ebert-Schifferer, Caravaggio, 104.

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to the Medusa, the mouth peeled back in a grimace of fear discloses the upper and lower rows of teeth; in a departure from Paolini, the necromancer peers obliquely down instead of sidelong. Alluding to the Medusa composition, his face and head command attention by existing divorced from the rest of body: Van Laer achieves the separation by letting the black-mantled necromancer slip fully assimilated into the inky background and eliminating his arms, a deviation from other versions of Witch Alarmed by a Devil where hand gestures vividly register fright. Given that the artist cast himself in the role of the necromancer, one may wonder if he was cognizant of Caravaggio’s self-portrait in the severed head of the Gorgon. Van Laer was certainly attracted by the physiognomic investigation through self-portraiture undertaken by such artists as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Rembrandt.70 That Van Laer devised a mock-heroic self-portrait, presenting himself in the role of a hapless necromancer whose own dark Art has turned against him, is tantalizing.71 The German painter and art theorist Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88) testified that Van Laer, whom he considered an intimate friend, often poked fun at his own misshapen body.72 His self-deprecating humor is evident in a drawing of a Roman tavern produced ca. 1640 (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin). An ample wall in the background is graffitied with a caricatured self-portrait under which appears scrawled “bamboots” (another cognomen by which the artist was known), a horned and winged Devil, and Death as a skeleton clutching an hourglass. This collection of figures echoes the artist’s demonic encounter and skull necromancy in Witch Alarmed by a Devil, notwithstanding that in the latter work Van Laer occulted his physical deformities in a uniform darkness and portrayed himself not comically but in extremis.73 Dora Catalano proposes that Van Laer’s Witch Alarmed by a Devil records his actual participation in a magical ritual; and, as mentioned earlier, Loredana Lorizzo conjectures that the painting displays Van Laer’s nightmare.74 What both interpretations share is the notion that the painting represents a real or imagined personal experience. It is stimulating, however, in a deeper way, to follow

70 Rembrandt etched a series of self-portraits in 1630, and Bernini portrayed his own grimacing face in Anima dannata (ca. 1619, Palazzo di Spagna, Rome), the latter is proposed as one of Van Laer’s sources of inspiration in Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene”; and Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 189. 71 On mock-heroic self-portraits, see Hall, The Self-Portrait, 103–29. 72 Von Sandrart, Academie, 183–84. See also Wind, A Foul of Pestilent Congregation, 114–16. 73 For a compelling interpretation of this drawing as an artistic self-homage, see Levine, “Pieter van Laer’s Artists’ Tavern.” 74 Catalano, “Oltre Salvator Rosa,” 100; and Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 190. For the possibility that the deformity of his body led him to acquire an interest in witchcraft, see Liedtke, Wheelock Jr., and McCarthy, “Self-Portrait with Magic Scene.” Wind, A Foul of Pestilent Congregation, 118, simply points out that the painting shows “Van Laer’s animated spirit and his love of high jinks.”

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the lead of Martial Guédron, who advances the view that the painting represents Van Laer’s musing on his artistic profession.75 Van Laer echoes the symbolic analogy between artist and magician, which is predicated on their similar virtuosity, if not objectives, that enables them to copy nature, invert the natural order, produce false images, and create ideal beauty.76 This analogy gained popularity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Giancarlo Fiorenza incisively suggests that the torch and magic tablet of Dosso’s sorceress (fig. 2) replace the artist’s brush and palette.77 Gaspare Murtola, in a madrigal of ca. 1603, admires the realism in Caravaggio’s Fortune-Teller in equating his art with magic and thus regarding him as a magician in his own right: “I do not know who is the better magician, the woman you depict, or you who paint her.”78 Adding complexity and a darker angle to this analogy, Van Laer’s device of the devil may be functioning as a double for the artist, who is just as capable of manipulating and deceiving the imagination through his own stock of illusory images. Accordingly, the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) finds a definite flaw in the illusionistic (and thus deceitful) nature of painting in comparison to sculpture, asserting that the devil “made himself into the first painter, one who, using shadows, deceived souls.”79 Echoing Cellini’s castigation—yet with due ironic emphasis taking in the self-inculpating nature of the charge—the Dutch artists Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) and Willem van Swanenburg (1580–1612) portrayed the devil in the sedate guise of a painter seated at work upon his easel in the apparent contentment of a well-appointed studio.80 Nourished from the Italian and Dutch traditions, Van Laer seems to satirize these symbolical analogies. *** In selecting witches and necromancers as the protagonists of Caravaggesque “genre” compositions, Pseudo-Caroselli, Caroselli, Paolini, and Van Laer boldly diverged from 75 Guédron, L’art de la grimace, 80. 76 On the artist as a magician, see also Kris and Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic, 61–90, 109–11. 77 Fiorenza, Dosso Dossi, 121. In a similar vein, Rocco, The Devout Hand, 135, suggests that in Elisabetta Sirani’s Circe (Antichità Il Leone, Bologna) the sorceress wields a pen or a wand in the same manner the artist handles a brush, implying the magical ability of both Circe and Sirani “to create something from nothing.” 78 Quoted from Pericolo, Caravaggio, 139. Giovanni Pietro Bellori commendably compares Giovanni Baglione to the magician Zoroaster, insofar as his brush, like a magic wand, produces false images; Bellori, “Alla pittura.” Paolo Vendramin compares Salvator Rosa to Medea on the basis of their shared power to create and destroy; Langdon, Salvator Rosa, 85. The necromancer in Salvator Rosa’s Night tondo (Cleveland Museum of Art) is compared to the artist as both create fantastical monsters; Segrave, “Conjuring Genius,” 319. 79 Cole, “The Demonic Arts,” 622; and Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 135–36. 80 Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, 184–89.

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Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, whose genre and studio scenes were populated by a hackneyed array of gypsies, musicians, soldiers, cardsharps, and young lads. Similar to Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, they imparted to their paintings the appearance of a staged reality in the studio. The varied configurations of wildly gesturing witches and necromancers, standing in close proximity to the viewer behind a table or against a wall, betray the artifice of the compositions. Whether or not the artists in fact worked from observations of live models, it is clear that they adapted a range of postures, gestures, and facial expressions drawn from Caravaggio’s repertoire. Occasionally, borrowings from Caravaggio are hyperbolized for satirical or shocking effect, to wit, Van Laer’s gargantuan still life and PseudoCaroselli’s replacement of a lizard with a devil. However, the satirical dimension ridiculing the witch’s naïveté is not to be understood as an unqualified license for unrestrained amusement. The presence of infanticidal witches in the background underscores the gravity of the scene and implies that the devil-harried magician is one who deserves to be punished. Van Laer explicitly tempers the merry-making exuberance of the scene by giving formal monition that “the devil does not jest”—the demonic pounce is lethal. We now turn to see how the devil as a mere snippet, in his stunted deployment, stirs the viewer’s emotions and imagination. Caravaggio’s oeuvre forms, as ever, a promising point of departure.

The Permeable Frame Figures only partly admitted into the pictorial frame enhance the illusion of spatial continuity beyond the artificial confines of the frame and endow the composition with dynamic force. The drastically cropped devil is an exuberant demonstration of the appeal of Baroque art, in which the field of representation extends insistently into the observer’s realm. Heinrich Wölfflin memorably lists the “open form” as one of the five stylistic principles of Baroque art, maintaining that the Baroque offers “only the unrest of change and the tension of transience.”81 Endorsing this observation, Henri Focillon asserts that Baroque forms “tend to invade space in every direction, to perforate it.”82 Specifically, Witch Alarmed by a Devil is associated with experimentations by Caravaggio and his followers involving the malleability of the frame. Cut-off and off-scene narrative devices are noticeable in Caravaggio’s half-length compositions painted around 1600 and depicting biblical narratives. Figures entering 81 Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, 58. On closed and open forms, see Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, 204–33. 82 Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art, 58.

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Figure 93. Caravaggio, Taking of Christ, 1602–3, oil on canvas, 133.5 × 169.5 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Photo © Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York / Bridgeman Images.

and departing the pictorial space impart immediacy and dramatic turmoil to the scenes. To mention just one noteworthy instance, in the Taking of Christ (fig. 93) soldiers arrive from the right to seize Christ just as he is embraced by Judas, while a slack-jawed John bolts off in horror on the left, outstretched arm swallowed up beyond the edge of the composition. The pictorial flux, washing in the enemy soldiers on the right just as it washes out John on the left, recalls the similar inside-and-out tidal flow in Witch Alarmed by a Devil. As Lorenzo Pericolo argues, chief among Caravaggio’s paintings to inspire the Caravaggisti to engage with cut-off and off-scene narrative techniques is the Calling of St. Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi (fig. 94). Pericolo points out that the presence of Christ in this painting is visually unstable. For one thing, Peter occludes Christ’s body, severing his arm from his shoulder; for another, the figures seated at the table are oblivious to the advent of Christ and Peter, or else glance past and not quite at them.83 These aspects reverberate in several works by the Caravaggisti. In Bernardo Strozzi’s (ca. 1581–1644) adaptation for the Calling of St. Matthew from around 1620 (fig. 95), an old man steps out in front of Christ, forcing Christ’s hand to disengage itself from the rest of the body and enter into 83 Pericolo, Caravaggio, 211–41, who also proposes symbolic meanings for Christ’s potential invisibility.

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Figure 94. Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Photo: Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images.

an awkward juxtaposition with the elder’s grizzled beard, from whose ripples it seems to peep out as through from behind a stage-curtain. Bartolomeo Manfredi takes the unseen quality of Christ and Peter to an extreme. His Group of Revellers of 1615–20, as well its copy by Nicolas Tournier (fig. 96), shows a clutch of revelers clustered around a table; the two central figures gaze goggle-eyed and slack-mouthed past their immediate companions at an unidentified element beyond the pictorial space to the left.84 Witch Alarmed by a Devil pertains to this network of visual cross-references that Pericolo painstakingly sets out. Pseudo-Caroselli, Caroselli, Paolini, and Van Laer were likewise preoccupied with the tension between the space 84 Pericolo, Caravaggio, 227–29. In Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ, the hand of the soldier clutching John’s red robes is obscured by the figure of the soldier just in front. Fried, “Notes towards a Caravaggisti Pictorial Poetics,” 113, discusses the illusorily isolated hand in works of Manfredi and Valentin de Boulogne.

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Figure 95. Bernardo Strozzi, Calling of St. Matthew, ca. 1620, oil on canvas, 139 × 187 cm. Worcester Art Museum. Photo © Worcester Art Museum / Bridgeman Images.

Figure 96. Nicolas Tournier, after Bartolomeo Manfredi, A Group of Revellers, ca. 1618–20, oil on canvas, 129 × 192 cm. Le musée de Tessé, Le Mans. Photo: Musée de Tessé / Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 97. Daniel Hopfer, Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women, ca. 1515, etching, 15.5 × 22.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

enclosed and excluded by the picture. They turned the illusorily disengaged hand in Caravaggio and Strozzi into a pair of claws literally severed from the body by the frame, thereby making the claws the focal point of both cut-off and off-scene aspects of their compositions. It is telling that other artists influenced by Caravaggio implemented the off-scene and cut-off strategies to depict visionary scenes. In Jusepe de Ribera’s visionary paintings adopting a Caravaggesque half-length single-figure format, a saint is glimpsed lifting his face towards the Divinity, which looms unseen beyond the confines of the painting. The content of the saint’s vision is relayed to the viewer only through the saint’s moved countenance.85 A germane iconographic tradition is the memento mori visit paid by Death and the Devil, singly or in cahoots, to strike fear into the breast of mortals (fig. 97). In a painting attributed to the Florentine artist Giovanni Martinelli (1600–1659) and dated to the 1630s, Death’s rattling skeleton, empty hourglass in bony hand, makes an uninvited appearance at a lush banquet to whisper his sweet nothings into a young reveler’s ear (fig. 98). It is as if Martinelli unveiled one of Caravaggio’s visual sources for the Calling of St. Matthew: the young man counting money on the left is extracted from a woodcut of Death and the 85 Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 170–72.

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Figure 98. Giovanni Martinelli, Death Comes to the Banquet Table, ca. 1630, oil on canvas, 120.6 × 174 cm. New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo © Fine Art Images / Bridgeman Images.

Figure 99. Giovanni Martinelli, Youth Surprised by Death, 1640s, oil on canvas, 60 × 80 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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Devil bursting upon the scene and getting into a tavern brawl over the soul of a card player in Hans Holbein’s moral series Les images de la mort.86 Martinelli also produced intimate, close-up compositions of the visit paid by Death to the affrighted mortals. Both Youth Surprised by Death (fig. 99) and Witch Alarmed by a Devil offer variations on the theme of untimely death and uninvited guests: whether it is Death or the devil, a young soul shivers in fright before the delivered sum.87 Note that the magic practitioner receives a preternatural, rather than an allegorical, visit, not only from the devil but also from Death. As a prop of divination, the burning skull is more than a stock vanitas still life or symbol of Death; it is a portion of literal death inflamed and reanimated to serve as a communication conduit to the world of the deceased.88 Had the witch or necromancer been replaced by a commonplace figure, the paintings would have been understood as an unalloyed allegory of the transience of life.89 The preternatural and allegorical elements reinforce each other. The undercurrents of memento mori iconography in Witch Alarmed by a Devil evince the fragility and transience of life, applying to witch or victim alike, and heighten the urgency of the moral imperative the canvas narrative conveys.

The Art of Horror While Wölfflin argues that the stylistic features that distinguish Renaissance and Baroque art are an autonomous and idiosyncratic development of the psyche, Giulio Carlo Argan, in his seminal essay “La rettorica e l’arte barocca” (1955), provides a theoretical foundation for this alleged psychological process. He argues that the Baroque style is an effective device of visual rhetoric serving the art of persuasion, which aims to engage the viewer and give them reasons to make-believe along with 86 Von Sandrart refers to this visual source in his 1675 compilation of artists’ biographies; quoted from Pericolo, Caravaggio, 216. 87 On Martinelli’s Uffizi painting, see Ricasoli, The Living Dead, 132–35. She proposes, without referring to specific works, that Martinelli might have been inspired from Caroselli in his Roman trip in the second half of the 1620s. For Martinelli’s other paintings of this subject, see Sgarbi, Il male, 144; and Vertova, “La Morte Secca,” 116. 88 It has been proposed that the Canesso painting is a pendant of Caroselli’s Vanitas (Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence); Damian, Un modello inédit, 24–25; and Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli, 179, and fig. 29. On witchcraft and vanitas, see chapter 4. 89 A rediscovered scene of witchcraft painted by Van Laer in 1634 for Alessandro Rondinini’s wife, Felice Zacchia, is published in Giometti and Lorizzo, “Rondinini Paintings Rediscovered,” 337–39. In the lower left corner, an elegant young woman wearing a low-necked dress and plumed hat adores herself in a mirror held by an old maid, ignorant of the witches and demons gathered behind her back. Van Laer’s image recalls Daniel Hopfer’s etching (fig. 97) in which a woman admires herself in a concave mirror held by her female servant, oblivious to the immediate or imminent life threat by Death and the Devil, who menacingly rush toward her in retribution for her vanity.

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Figure 100. Follower of Salvator Rosa (signed FGS), Witchcraft Scene, 1674, oil on canvas, 45.8 × 68.2 cm. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.

the artwork.90 Indeed, Pseudo-Caroselli, Caroselli, Paolini, and Van Laer engaged the spectator by dint of various formal and compositional strategies. The close-up of an isolated figure in a transient outbreak of emotion creates a sense of immediacy and physical presence that cannot fail to coax a relative emotional response from the viewer. The proximity of magical trappings to the first pictorial plane functions as a prompt to reflection over their usage and a challenge to decipher the occult signs written on the pages. By making the knife and strip of music trickle into the viewer’s realm, Van Laer invites him to make use of these objects in whatever way best suits the painting. The virtually unrelieved invisibility of the claws in the paintings of Pseudo-Caroselli and Caroselli prompts the viewer to pay close attention to the scene to be able to identify the source of the horror. The devil figure constitutes the culmination of the viewer’s involvement with the paintings. Not only does his gradual entrance into the picture encourage the viewer to imagine the chain of events leading up to his arrival and foretelling the imminent events, but it also delivers an emotional stimulus of unexpected magnitude. To grasp the effect the figure of the devil may have had upon the viewer, I turn to an examination of two paintings that were possibly influenced by a version of Witch 90 On Argan and his impact on art historians, see Lavin, “Argan’s Rhetoric,” 257–61; and Van Gastel, Il Marmo spirante, 17–18.

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Alarmed by a Devil. Each work offers a different solution to the task of staging the subject matter: the intrusion of an unexpected visitor upon a scene of magic. The first, signed and dated “FGS 1674” on the central urn, was produced by an unidentified follower of Salvator Rosa (fig. 100).91 In a dramatically candlelit, cave-like laboratory, an uprearing bicephalic monster with a skeletal body and a serpentine neck terrifies a necromancer in the midst of his magic and makes him tumble over an upturned stool. Note that the morphology of the demonic monster and its minatory stance above its victim constitute a direct borrowing from Rosa’s Temptation of Saint Anthony (ca. 1645–49, Palazzo Pitti, Florence). A trussed-up young boy lies face-up on a table, his head dangling off the table’s edge, ready to drop into the urn below. Similarities to the Witch Alarmed by a Devil include the brazier of live coals and the necromancer’s terrified expression and movements. A different approach is adopted by the Dutch painter Thomas Wijck (1616–77) in a painting dated to the 1660s (fig. 101). Present in an alchemist’s laboratory are a young assistant working behind a desk and a boy kneeling in prayer in the middle of a magic circle; a candle, skull, bones, books, and other trappings lie dispersed on its perimeter. Unaware of, or indifferent to, Death’s spectral skeleton blowing a trumpet in the murk behind the young assistant, they glance astounded to the right at an undisclosed occurrence—an apparition, a devil, or some other preternatural spectacle eventuated by the boy’s magic. Elisabeth Berry Drago notes the common ground shared by this painting and Van Laer’s Witch Alarmed by a Devil, with which Wijck could have become acquainted in Rome in the early 1640s.92 Wijck may also have known Manfredi’s or Tournier’s Group of Revellers (fig. 96) and Martinelli’s Death Comes to the Banquet Table (fig. 98), from which he extracted Death and its insubstantial companion, the latter inaccessible to the viewer. These two different approaches to orchestrating the intrusion of a surprising visitor into the magician’s studio illustrate the distinction between “horror” and “terror.” By these terms, I refer not to the common distinction between “terror” as the victim’s reaction and “horror” existing in the eye of the beholder,93 but to their usage in modern literary criticism. Appealing to a modern distinction may seem to court anachronism, yet as a theoretical framework of effective rhetoric, it is transhistorical. On this point I side with Maria Loh, who urges art historians to investigate how horror imagery works, cautioning that “an over-emphasis on the social and historical at the expense of the affective and representational normalises or explains away the strange, resistant beauty and horror of the historical past and of the visual image in and of itself.”94 The first to distinguish between terror and horror 91 The painting was sold in a Christie’s auction on August 12, 2017. 92 Berry Drago, Painted Alchemists, 190. For Wijck’s painting, see also Russell Corbett, “Convention and Change,” 259–60. 93 Levack, “The Horrors of Witchcraft,” 925–27. 94 Loh, “Introduction,” 329.

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Figure 101. Thomas Wijck, The Alchemist and Death, ca. 1660, oil on panel, 55 × 49 cm. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 20013 (56–003.32), Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston.

was the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. In her influential essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry” (1826), she writes in relation to the sublimity in Shakespeare’s plays that terror “is not distinctly pictured forth, but is seen in glimpses through obscuring shades, the great outlines only appearing, which excite the imagination to complete the rest.”95 Radcliffe privileges terror over horror because terror, not unlike the sublime, leaves it to the imagination to flesh out its forms. The thrill of horror and 95 Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” 404.

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surprise is evanescent and we “experience a far less degree of interest,” whereas the effect of terror incites “deep and solemn feelings” and is “left long upon the mind.”96 Maintaining this hierarchy, the best-selling horror author Stephen King clarifies that terror is the suspenseful moment before the source is revealed, the point when “the imagination alone is stimulated. The reader does the job on himself.” Horror, on the other hand, is “an emotion which is slightly less fine, because it is not entirely of the mind.”97 It is experienced in the moment of denouement when the reader apprehends the source of unknown terror and is able to see it clearly for the first time, thus deflating the dramatic tension which terror builds. The fully worked-out demonic monster painted by the follower of Rosa overdetermines the imagination through its sheer volume of articulated detail, its wealth of stimuli rendering the imagination redundant. It therefore elicits horror, first and foremost, whereas Wijck elicits terror by compelling the viewer to imagine what has caused the boys’ astonishment. Wijck’s canvas, however, has in store for the viewer a small frustration: there isn’t anything to aid the imagination, no outline to narrow down the set of possibilities. Note that Radcliffe prefers a state of orderly ambiguity, which “leaves the imagination to act upon the few hints” over freewheeling confusion.98 The pair of claws in Witch Alarmed by a Devil works precisely in Radcliffe’s preferred manner. It discloses the intruder’s identity and provides enough of a hint to structure the viewer’s imagination. However reconstructed, it must surely be hideous and abominable enough to justify holding the witch transfixed. Moreover, the independently operating claws successfully convey the factor of surprise. A hand suddenly thrusting forth from off-screen to on-screen is a quintessential trope in horror and thriller films.99 The intruding hand makes the audience aware of the world beyond the protagonist’s comfort zone, an off-screen region that houses an invisible threat.100 Hands severed by the edge of the screen often appear in thrillers to preserve the anonymity of the murderer until the end of these films, while the standard close-up of the murder victim narrows the surrounding space to increase the surprise. Posters of giallo, Italian thrillers popular in the 1960s and 1970s, presented the climactic close-up of a woman screaming in horror as a glistening knife gripped by a black-gloved hand infiltrates the frame (fig. 102). In a similar rhetorical manner, the penetrating pair of claws and the close-up view 96 Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” 403. 97 King, Danse Macabre, 22–25. King defines a third, most inferior category of “the gag reflex of revulsion.” 98 Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” 404. 99 Pericolo explains his comparison of a Renaissance painting with a f ilm sequence: “I believe that some of the latter’s technical devices, albeit historically unrelated, find their equivalents in the former. The reason is simple: anthropologically speaking, the procedures of visual invention may unfold in an analogous manner”; Pericolo, “The Invisible Presence,” 4. 100 On off-screen space, see Burch, Theory of Film Practice, 17–31, esp. 21.

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Figure 102. Film poster of The Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971, directed by Paolo Cavara. Photo: Everett Collection.

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of the victim function as an effective device of horror and pleasurable suspense. By disclosing the fiend’s identity, the clawed extremities act for the overall clarity of the narrative. In this way, Witch Alarmed by a Devil constitutes a rift between the viewer of the painting and the viewer in the painting in terms of what they see. While the magician who can see the devil from top to bottom experiences horror, the partly glimpsed devil occasions psychological suspense and anticipation, in short, a state of terror. This is not to say that the viewer’s experience, tinged with the essential horror necessary to the aesthetic appreciation of these works, is of a piece with the tribulations attributable to the witch. As befits a spectator, the viewer takes his horror with just the right amount of pleasure. From classical tragedies to the horror film genre, the mental state of being frightened or horrified by a safe representation in an artistic medium is nothing short of pleasurable. Aristotle writes in his Poetics that pity and fear, the emotions felt towards the suffering characters in a tragedy, are experienced pleasurably.101 The so-called “paradox of horror,” namely, the enjoyment of negative emotions in horror films, has acquired many philosophical and psychological explanations. For example, Noël Carroll argues that the pleasure one takes in the horror film genre comes not from being horrified but from fascination with the design of monstrosity and from curiosity as to what will happen next.102 Similarly, one may take it that the viewer of Witch Alarmed by a Devil is enjoying a dash of fear, and yet the pleasure thus generated does not lighten the scene in any sense.

The Devil Betwixt and Between Keeping the devil out of sight (apart from a flourish of claws) visually moderates his presence but by no means undermines belief in his existence. At the time of the paintings’ production, the existence of the Devil and his demonic legions was virtually indisputable, so much so that it was generally accepted that to deny the power of the Devil was to the deny the power of God.103 Even skeptics who doubted the reality of witches did not deny that it was possible to make pacts with the Devil.104 As the last part of this chapter argues, far from nullifying the diabolical 101 Aristotle, Poetics, 37, 39 (chap. 4): “We enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful to us, such as the forms of the vilest animals and of corpses.” See also Stephen Halliwell’s introduction in Aristotle, Poetics, 18–19. 102 Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror. 103 King James VI and I, Daemonologie, 54–55. 104 For the credulous, witches receive their supernatural power from the Devil; for the skeptical, the Devil plays tricks on a woman so she believes she is a witch possessing such powers. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 179–213.

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agents central to Christian belief, the devil’s drastic cropping is a full-fledged manifestation of his nature, especially of those characteristics that underline his liminality. This unconventional deployment has largely gone unremarked in studies devoted to the form of the Devil, such as Luther Link’s The Devil: A Mask without a Face and Daniel Arasse’s Le portrait du Diable. The sole art historian who concerns this aspect of the Witch Alarmed by a Devil is Loredana Lorizzo, who argues that the cut-off claws are an effective metaphor of the changeable and ambivalent figure of the Devil.105 This insight is one of the analytical routes to develop further. The term “liminality,” derived from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold,” was introduced by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who described spatial transitions as having pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal phases. Victor Turner expanded the notion of liminality to include the condition of residing in any transitional zone that blurs and merges distinctions or existing on the boundary between two distinct categories but not fully belonging to either.106 Liminality, along with inversion, is a critical component in the demonic sphere. These two negative paradigms of displacement are underlined by Sarah Iles Johnston as the characteristic qualities of the demonic inasmuch as they violate established social norms. “The demon,” she explains, “is not merely outside of any single, given taxon, but situated squarely between two taxa that are considered to be mutually exclusive.”107 While inversion is explored as a prevalent motif in witchcraft imagery in earlier chapters, I now turn to examine liminality in its role in the construction of the concept of witchcraft. As we shall see, the permeable frame in Witch Alarmed by a Devil lends visibility to the liminal nature of the Devil and his demonic entourage in terms of their corporeality, external appearance, character, and demeanor. Capturing the devil in mid-process of becoming visible raises a fundamental question: Can demons, as invisible, immaterial, and incorporeal spirits, physically intervene in the world to make themselves manifest to men? On this matter, the theory put forth by the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas became orthodoxy during the age of witch hunts. To resolve the contradiction between biblical accounts describing angels as possessing bodies and the counter-emphasis on angels’ immateriality, Aquinas assigns a limited corporeality to angels and demons (who are subject to the same apparitional mechanisms) while emphasizing their essentially spiritual nature. Angels and demons do not have bodies but they can “assume bodies of air, condensing it by the Divine power,” as air condensed into visible clouds, in order to “give evidence of that intellectual companionship 105 Lorizzo, “Quando il Diavolo ci mette lo zampino,” 193. 106 For an introduction to liminality and anthropology in artistic context, see Jacobs, Thresholds and Boundaries, 3–5. 107 Iles Johnston “Defining the Dreadful,” 362–64, quote from 363.

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which men expect to have with them in the life to come.”108 Because the concept of demonic witchcraft depends on the possibility of physical interaction between devils and men, the Thomist argument concerning the borderline state of demons’ corporeality became its chief epistemological premise.109 Demonologists reasserted that demons assume bodies condensed out of air in order to present themselves materially before witches.110 Given that demons reside on the boundaries of the visible world, their accommodation within the norms of naturalistic painting presents an artistic challenge: How can demonic visibility and immateriality be simultaneously represented? This question has so far been primarily addressed to the depiction of angels. One solution pertinent to this discussion was to visualize the theological concept of angels as a condensation of air. Christian Kleinbub explains the cloud putti in Italian Renaissance paintings as a pictorial manifestation of the theological notion that angels presented themselves to men in forms which were nothing but wisps of cloud. Cloud putti, Kleinbub persuasively contends, “epitomized, even embodied, the idea of mediation between earthly and heavenly space, spaces seen and unseen,” and “dramatized the liminality inherent in their nebulous medium.”111 Steven Ostrow, in his study on Caravaggio’s angels, argues that the inherent spirituality of the angel in the Martyrdom of St. Matthew (fig. 91) is manifested by giving him a literal Thomist treatment “as having materialized from the cloud” and by making him adopt a contorted, eccentric posture to underline the celestial quality of being residing in the nebulous embodiment.112 The artists of Witch Alarmed by a Devil found another way to represent the theological notion of the devil as both visible and immaterial: it was the device of the frame to which the artists appealed in order to body forth and dramatize the devil’s liminal reality. Crossing the threshold constituted by the permeable frame, the devil is simultaneously betwixt and between, captured in his transitional passage from invisibility to visibility in the moment he confronts the magician. The dramatic rift between the witch, who observes the devil in his entirety, and the viewer, who glimpses but a small fraction of the whole, evokes the notion, 108 Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.51.2. On demons made out of air, see also Cole, “The Demonic Arts,” 623–25. 109 Stephens, “Habeas Corpus,” 78; and Stephens, Demon Lovers, 61–62. 110 Nicolas Jacquier, Flagellum hereticorum fascinariorum, in Ostorero, “Promoter of the Sabbat,” 42; Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 304; King James VI and I, Daemonologie, 51–55; and Rémy, Demonolatry, 27. In contrast, the skeptic demonologist Reginald Scot denied the demons’ material presence and physical contact with witches, claiming that demons are non-corporeal spirits; Clark, Thinking with Demons, 211–12. 111 Kleinbub, “At the Boundaries of Sight,” 121. On the meaning of clouds in visionary paintings, see Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 84–98. 112 Ostrow, “Caravaggio’s Angels,” 140–41. On angels in early modern Italian art, see also Cole, “Angel/ Demon”; Cole, “Discernment and Animation”; Gill, Angels and the Order of Heaven; and Cole, “Are Angels Allegories?”

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in favor with some demonologists, that seeing the Devil was a unique privilege conferred by the conclusion of a pact with the Devil. Heinrich Kramer writes in the Malleus maleficarum: Although the incubus demon always works visibly from the point of view of the sorceress (it is not necessary for him to approach her invisibly because of the ratified and explicit agreement), in terms of the bystanders it is frequently the case that the sorceresses were seen lying on their backs in fields or woods, naked above the navel and gesticulating with their forearms and thighs. They keep their limbs in an arrangement suitable for that filthy act, while the incubus demons work with them invisibly in terms of the bystanders.113

The picture frame serves as a symbolic threshold that addresses the liminal region between distinct zones, such as the living and the dead or the sacred and the profane.114 Thus, the figure intersected by the frame represents a lingering-on or passing-between two realms. The liminal function of the frame is made clear when a physical threshold is depicted near the frame’s edge to double the severing effect. In The Last Supper of the sixteenth-century Bruges artist Pieter Pourbus (fig. 103), for example, the devil sidling up to Judas with open arms is severed by the frame as he passes through a doorway to enter the scene. The doorway doubles the picture frame as a symbolic transition from a profane to a sacred region or from Hell to the sublunary world of men. A glimpse into the space behind a robustly metaphysical door is afforded by Dürer’s Four Witches, where a demon peeps out from behind a door opening, also situated at the edge of the composition, the rumble of Hell’s fire at his back (fig. 104). The frame in Witch Alarmed by a Devil, while not overlapping with any physical threshold, serves as a spatial border in two senses. In the first sense, the frame separates the ordinary world from the infernal regions of Hell, from which the devil arrives. In the Canesso version, the devil appears to be rising from the underworld, whereas in the other versions, his passage from Hell to the earthly sphere takes place on the same plane. His lateral entrance into the picture is not without precedent. In Giotto’s Pact of Judas in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (fig. 105), the Devil in the form of an inky silhouette—evidently, Giotto’s solution for the reconciliation of visibility with immateriality—lurks behind Judas and manhandles him into position by 113 Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 313. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 105–6, argues that in this passage, Kramer provides an explanation for the inquisitors’ failure to catch women mid-intercourse with their demon-lovers. 114 Jacobs, Thresholds and Boundaries, 3–20. In Guercino’s Burial of St. Petronilla (1623) the threshold of the grave, from which emerge a pair of hands to lower Petronilla, is aligned with the border; Steinberg, “Guercino’s Saint Petronilla,” 231–33. In Enea Vico’s engraving of two old women near an altar (1542), the frame cuts across a skeletal hand lifting a winged hourglass from an open grave; Simons, “The Crone, the Witch, and the Library,” 289.

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Figure 103. Pieter Pourbus, The Last Supper, 1548, oil on panel, 46.5 × 63 cm. Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Photo © Art in Flanders / Bridgeman Images.

the shoulders to show that “Satan enters into Judas” (Luke 22:3). Mark Zucker has proposed that Giotto had the frame bisect the Devil midway into his entrance in order to degrade him to the rank of servants, peasants, and other base creatures who are shown lopped by the frame elsewhere in the fresco cycle.115 Giotto, however, might have imparted another meaning to his perpendicular bisection of the Devil. In his Ascension, Christ outstretches his hands beyond the fresco’s upper border to mark his exaltation from the terrestrial world into Heaven and his transition from corporeal to incorporeal being.116 The Devil in The Pact of Judas embarks on a reverse passage, from the invisible to the visible world. A similar implication is found in devotional images of the Madonna del Soccorso (Virgin Mary of Perpetual Help), whose cult spread in Italy from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. According to legend, an impious mother placed a malediction on her child such that the Devil would take him away, only to see her caution rise up in the flesh. Frightened, the boy ran to the Virgin Mary for protection. Implored by the mother 115 Zucker, “Figure and Frame,” 5. 116 Compare the medieval iconography of a radically cropped Christ ascending to Heaven with just his legs visible beneath him. Schapiro, “The Image of the Disappearing Christ”; Deshman, “Another Look at the Disappearing Christ”; and Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 36.

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Figure 104. Albrecht Dürer, Four Witches, 1497, engraving, 19 × 13.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 105. Giotto, The Pact of Judas, ca. 1303, fresco. Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Photo © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images.

to save her son, the Virgin smote the Devil with a cudgel. The Madonna dominating the center of the composition is often flanked on the left by the Devil and on the right by the mother, in agreement with the traditional Heaven-and-Hell orientation. Some paintings show a cropped Devil rushing from Hell, stretching beyond the picture’s edge, in pursuit of the boy (fig. 106).117 That the frame of Witch Alarmed by 117 For a comprehensive study of this iconography, see El-Hanany, “Beating the Devil.” The following images display a radical cropping of the Devil: El-Hanany, figs. 3, 15, 32, 33, 39, 43. Efrat El-Hanany points

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Figure 106. Ansano di Michele Ciampanti, Madonna del Soccorso, early sixteenth century, panel, 57 × 32 cm. Amedeo Lia Museum, La Spezia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Sailko.

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a Devil serves as a spatial boundary between the terrestrial and spiritual regions is particularly apparent in the paintings of Paolini and Van Laer, where the devil’s entrance from the right reverses the left-to-right direction in which the painting is viewed, suggesting that the regions inhabited by the devil and by the viewer are not only metaphysically distinct but glance off each other with as little friction as the painting, overall, allows. In the second distinction-marking sense, the frame alludes to ways in which thresholds and boundaries function in magic rituals. Since antiquity, the doorway was believed to be a particular haunt of demons. Apotropaic objects attached to thresholds warned that crossing the threshold is fraught with perils. Crossroads (the intersection of two roads that belongs to neither and both) and graveyards (the meet of the living and the dead) constituted the locations of choice for performing magic and holding the sabbath.118 Magicians enclosed themselves in the magic circle as a protective device from the demons, who can linger only on the perimeter (fig. 6).119 In Witch Alarmed by a Devil the devil’s hostile foray into the witch’s protected territory determines the frame as its (unavailing) borderline. The similar fractional visibility of the Devil who dashes into the scene to seize or manipulate his victim (figs. 105 and 106) adds impetus to his brisk arrival and highlights his rapid outpacing of his victims. Pierre de Lancre, in his Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons (1612), likens devils to a flash of lightning insofar as they are swift, unpredictable, and instantaneous.120 In thrusting forth his claws and theatrically announcing his arrival, the devil performs his malevolent impetuousness and the likelihood of deceit attending his actions. The devil’s body, in its intimated presentation, prompts reflection on his conceivable outward appearance. French magistrate Nicholas Rémy asserts in his Demonolatriae of 1595 that the “different shapes and appearances [of demons] may be said to be limitless” and are similar to “clouds, which when shaken by the winds, take an infinite variety of shapes,” an analogy alluding to the theological article of faith that demons assumed bodies of condensed air. Specifically, demons “will confine themselves within the very smallest of bodies, and now dilate themselves into monstrous size; sometimes they appear as men, sometimes as women; they will roar like lions, leap like panthers, or bark like dogs; and at times will transform out that in some paintings the Devil was cropped as an act of symbolic mutilation to deprive him of his power. 118 De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 93 (2.6): “The devil prefers crossroads as places to hold the sabbath.” On liminal places as sites to perform magic in the classical era, see Iles Johnston, “Crossroads”; and Doroszewska, “The Liminal Space.” 119 Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 14; Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 175–76; and Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft, 54–56. 120 De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 34 (1.4).

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themselves into the shape of a wine-skin or some other vessel.”121 One illustrious example that we saw earlier is the demonic hybrid in Lo stregozzo (fig. 17). The hybridity and variability of the devil’s embodiments are illustrated in Guazzo’s Compendium maleficarum. At a cursory glance, it appears that throughout the eight woodcuts showing the Devil supervising witches’ rituals the depiction of individual figures does not undergo significant changes (figs. 86 and 87). However, the figure of the Devil deserves a close scrutiny. His endowment with a human body, bat wings, a tail, a pair of horns, and clawed feet remains consistent, yet in each plate his physiognomy takes on new forms: he acquires, successively, avian, canine, and caprine facial attributes, beaks of several sizes and shapes, and similar flourishes. Guazzo, who succinctly remarked that the Devil is “visibly present in some bodily forms,” delegated the task of diversifying his appearance to the printmaker.122 Keeping the devil out of view in Witch Alarmed by a Devil reinforces his imaginationstirring mutability and potentiality. It follows that the witch’s astonishment is due in part not only to the devil’s presence but also to his assuming one of his many unexpected forms. De Lancre writes: “The demons, by adapting to man’s bizarre and changing nature, twist and transform themselves in a thousand ways in order to surprise him.”123 There is an inherent fit, pictorially speaking, between the idea of a devil possessing the malevolent desire to deceive through the multiplicity of his guises and the fact that the painting refrains from articulating any one such particular form beyond the core attribute of flourished claws. It is thus no mistake that the constant in these paintings is the pair of claws, given the transformational potential inherent in the figure of the devil. Clawed extremities were widely believed to be the only part of the devil’s body that remained constant throughout their shapeshifting. Rémy proclaims: “Demons can never so completely ape the human shape”; they betray their true nature insofar as “their hands and feet 121 Rémy, Demonolatry, 27. On the various forms assumed by demons, see Kramer, The Hammer of Witches, 158; King James VI and I, Daemonologie, 51–52; Roper, Witch Craze, 88–92; and Hutton, The Witch, 270–71. For an analysis of the devil’s hybrid body, see Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews, 61–78. 122 Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 13. Therefore, to generalize the image of the Devil as a “monstrous creature with horns, cloven hoofs, a tail, bat wings, and an ugly human face” (Davidson, Early Modern Supernatural, 39) is to ignore the myriad invented and imagined possibilities of forms that the Devil is capable of assuming. Luther Link explains the Devil’s diverse appearances in that the “graphic attributes and concept of the Devil were rarely def ined in the imagination of artists,” and ascribes this visual diversity to the diff iculty of representing pure evil and to the heterogeneity of the Devil’s roles. Link, The Devil, 15. In opposition to this view, I argue that demonological reasons rather than artistic or psychological temperament account for the Devil’s numerous guises. Arasse, Le portrait du Diable, 106n. 1, notes that the term “portrait of the devil” is paradoxical insofar as the Devil has many faces and personas. 123 De Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, 19, 95–97 (2.12–13), and throughout the first discourse in book 1, which is dedicated to the Devil’s inconsistent appearance.

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are distorted and hooked with claws like those of obscene vultures.”124 Indeed, in images of the Devil disguised as Father Time, a monk tempting Christ, a woman luring Saint Anthony, or a man enticing a witch, his protruding clawed or hoofed extremities betray his demonic nature (fig. 45). Parmigianino’s clawed-legged and tailed phallus is identified as a disguised devil on a similar ground (see chapter 3). Epistemologically, that the Witch Alarmed by a Devil displays no more than the devil’s invariant physical property amounts to proof of his true identity. The claws therefore epitomize the devil’s liminal nature in relation to both kinds of hybridity: the simultaneous hybridity in his combinatory body and the diachronic hybridity in his ability of shape-shifting.125 The focus on the devil’s clawed extremities lends attention to his threatening intent and destructive actions. Witchcraft authors describe the devil placing his claw on a witch’s brow to rub off the holy chrism and destroy the sign of the baptism.126 With his talons he lacerates a stigma diabolicum on the bodies of witches, leaving deep, albeit painless, scars or welts.127 Trees, walls, and roofs struck by lightning were acts of destruction by the devil; evidence for this thesis was found in the claw-marks left on the struck objects.128 These harmful and blasphemous activities, which the devil accomplishes with his claws, impart symbolism to this body part as a parodical counterpart of the Hand of God, an artistic motif signaling God’s blessing and intervention in human affairs, and alludes to the devil’s role as the antagonist and profane imitator of God.129 In Witch Alarmed by a Devil this allusion speaks to the witches’ veneration of the Devil in lieu of the Christian God. Walter Stephens insightfully observes: “Demonic corporeality was nothing but performativity. … A ‘virtual’ demonic body had to materialize and perform for a human ‘audience.’”130 This performativity is in full swing in Witch Alarmed by a Devil, where the devil becomes a vivid presence to both witch and viewer. In his graded and gradual visibility, the devil effectively performs his character and appearance. He lingers on the frame, rocking back and forth between the invisible and the visible, the spiritual and the earthly sphere. Those who have formally pledged themselves to the Devil (the necromancer and the witch) have direct access to his visible forms; 124 Rémy, Demonolatry, 28. In his human form, the Devil often wore a long black cloak to conceal his misshapen cloven feet; Rémy, 69. See also chapter 3. 125 See the discussion on metamorphosis and hybridity in chapter 4. 126 Guazzo, Compendium maleficarum, 14. 127 Rémy, Demonolatry, 8–10. 128 Rémy, Demonolatry, 78–79. 129 On the Devil as God’s ape, see King James VI and I, Daemonologie, 22–23, 35; Clark, Thinking with Demons, 80–93; and Cole, “The Demonic Arts,” 636n. 29. 130 Stephens, “Habeas Corpus,” 78 (italics in original), who also writes: “Angelic/demonic performativity and impersonation was so inherently theatrical that a number of writers, particularly in England during the reign of King James VI and I, denounced theater as the devil’s playground.”

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the viewers, to the extent to which they fall into neither category, is permitted only a glimpse of him. The work not only stirs but essentially relies upon the viewer’s imagination to supply the missing elements in a depiction that progresses from iconographical constant to an anatomical free-for-all; while the motif of the claws carries a range of significations (of danger, of deceit, of the profane aping of God), its primary function is to dramatize the devil’s nature as it flickers betwixt and between on the boundary determined by the frame.131

Conclusion The ideal effects of seventeenth-century painting and the means for their achievement are summarized thus by Bernard Aikema: When viewing a work of art, the Seicento spectator wanted to be surprised, to experience the marvels of a creation as wonderful, as unusual, as paradoxical, as unexpected as possible. Satire and grotesque humour, daring eroticism and abstruse philosophy, pseudo-science and witchcraft could provide appropriate themes to achieve the desired effect of meraviglia, the term used in Seicento poetry and literary criticism to describe such effects.132

As defined in Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca, the effects of meraviglia consist in “a passion of the soul that makes you astonished, born of novelty and of a rare thing.”133 A key principle of Baroque art signifying astonishment and surprise, meraviglia f inds expression in Witch Alarmed by a Devil in myriad ways: through the novelty of the iconography, its necromantic mystique, the supernatural appearance of a devil, the frenzied climax, and the intensity of the emotions depicted. In fact, the very idea of meraviglia is enacted in Witch Alarmed by a Devil insofar as the witch assumes the role of the viewer who grows suffused with astonishment thanks to the unexpected and unusual encounter with the supernatural. In light of this array of elements, which befit the profile 131 Thus understood, Witch Alarmed by a Devil is comparable to Spada’s sketch (fig. 9) not only because it shows a horrifying pursuit at close range, but because it stresses the liminality of the pursuing adversary as the key element in the scene. As seen in chapter 1, Spada’s witch, too, is liminal in that she is presented as a dream yet without being visually marked as such, presumably to convey the dreamer’s experience of his nightmare as real. 132 Aikema, “Marvellous Imitations and Outrageous Parodies,” 116. 133 Meraviglia (or maraviglia) in Vocabolario, 510: “Commozion d’animo, che rende attonito, nascente da novità, o da cosa rara.” On meraviglia, see Kenseth, “The Age of the Marvelous,” 40–53; and Strunck, “Concenttismo and the Aesthetics of Display.”

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for meraviglia, Witch Alarmed by a Devil would have easily outcompeted other artworks for spectatorial attention, whether in the Roman art market or on the wall of a galleria or quadreria. The analysis of the oft-overlooked Witch Alarmed by a Devil enables us to move beyond the main compositional and iconographic strands of sixteenthand seventeenth-century witchcraft imagery and gain insights from the unusual scene of a witch succumbing to a devil. My central contention in this chapter is that Pseudo-Caroselli, Caroselli, Paolini, and Van Laer primarily aspired to emotional and intellectual spectatorial engagement. They achieved this by making two significant compositional choices. First, they brought content and form into conflict with one another by embedding a supernatural phenomenon into a traditionally Caravaggesque composition, one typically associated with genre and studio scenes. This fusion of the supernatural and the ordinary serves to underscore witchcraft as a phenomenon that forces the collision of both worlds. Moreover, the personal experience and intimacy conferred on the scene by its covert Caravaggesque naturalism corral the viewer into the drama. The second invention to which the artists resorted was to dramatize the devil’s gradual entrance into the pictorial field by turning him into a cropped figure inhabiting the margins of the frame. Transcending its immediate function of establishing transience and spatial continuity, this quintessential Baroque device quickens the viewer’s imagination into a state of anticipation and horror, and kindles reflection on the devil’s liminality. Ultimately, the specifics of the viewer’s response to the spectacle of the ambushed witch remain a matter for tantalizing conjecture. Aside from the elements of ridicule attending the scene, implied by the happenstance of tumbling down into the very pit the witch has dug herself, could it be that the viewer is nudged to pity—even sympathy—for the plight of a subservient fallen into the clutches of her demonic master? Does the presentation of the witch as the quarry of the devil lessen her moral responsibility with respect to the deeds she perpetrates? And so, did the quartet of paintings serve as a visual harbinger of the abatement of the inquisitors’ furor over the following decades?

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Tedeschi, John. “The Question of Magic and Witchcraft in Two Unpublished Inquisitorial Manuals of the Seventeenth Century.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 131 (1987): 92–111. van Gastel, Joris. Il Marmo spirante: Sculpture and Experience in Seventeenth-Century Rome. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2013. Velten, Hans Rudolf. “Devils On and Off Stage: Shifting Effects of Fear and Laughter in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Urban Theatre.” In Dramatic Experience: The Poetics of Drama and the Early Modern Public Sphere(s), ed. Katja Gvozdeva, Tatiana Korneeva, and Kirill Ospovat, 250–68. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Vertova, Luisa. “La Morte Secca.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 36 (1992): 103–28. Wind, Barry. “A Foul of Pestilent Congregation”: Images of “Freaks” in Baroque Art. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Wölfflin, Heinrich. Renaissance and Baroque. Trans. Kathrin Simon. London: Collins, 1964. Wölfflin, Heinrich. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Early Modern Art. Trans. Jonathan Blower. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2015. Wuidar, Laurence. “Magie démoniaque et allégorie de l’ouïe: Le canon musical dans les vanités de Breughel, Natali et van Laer.” Annales d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie 27 (2005): 89–108. Zika, Charles. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Zika, Charles. “Medieval Magicians as People of the Book.” In Imagination, Books and Community in Medieval Europe, ed. Gregory C. Kratzmann, 246–54. Melbourne: Macmillan Art Publishing, 2010. Zucker, Mark J. “Figure and Frame in the Paintings of Giotto.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 1 (1982): 1–5.

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Epilogue The witchcraft scenes produced by Salvator Rosa (1615–73) typically depict vibrant, bustling compositions, figuring exuberant witches performing various acts of magic. In one small canvas, however, Rosa, dispensing with eventful phenomena, chose to portray a single subdued witch kept company on a separate canvas by a soldier in full armor and martial garb in a similarly somber setting (figs. 107 and 108). These twinned pendants, sheltering today in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, were most likely produced around 1655, when Rosa lived in Rome.1 The witch and the soldier are each seated on a rocky ledge against a nocturnal, desolate alp hinting at a mountainside. The witch is naked from the waist up, her desiccated breasts contrasting oddly with her otherwise muscular physique. Her feet, resting on a scrap of paper inscribed with magical runes, are ringed around by lit candles. For his part, the soldier, seated on his rocky perch with his standard askew by his side, directs a melancholy look at the viewer. Residing in different planes and failing of interaction, the two figures remain physically and mentally isolated. Yet Rosa’s configuration of a concatenated pair of paintings signals that the two figures, despite taking up separate residences, assume full resonance only in conjunction with one another.2 How, then, is this mutually enhancing yet physically discrete effect to be analyzed? The pendant pictorial format played a vital instructive role in challenging the viewer to tease out connections between companion pieces, thus shaping and adding complexity to the viewer’s aesthetic appreciation.3 Alive to the artistic strategies entailed by the pendant format, Rosa demonstrated his ingenuity in setting up analogies and antitheses, both compositional and iconographic, in the 1 The provenance of the pendants is not known until their purchase by the Pio di Savoia family sometime between 1724 and 1750. Guarino, Masini, and Tittoni, Guercino, 61, inv. nos. 101–2. Scholars have mainly been concerned about the date of the pendants, leaving the interpretation of these pendants understudied. Bruno, Roma: Pinacoteca Capitolina, 80–81; Sybille Ebert-Schifferer’s entry “Una strega, Un soldato,” in Cassani, Salvator Rosa, 178–79; Xavier Salomon’s entry “Witch, Soldier,” in Langdon, Salomon, and Volpi, Salvator Rosa, 180–81; Volpi, Salvator Rosa, cat. nos. 124–25; and Segrave, “Conjuring Genius,” 556–59. 2 The pendants have been interpreted separately in association with melancholy, solitude, and the philosophy of Stoicism in Campoli, “Le ‘stregonerie’ di Salvator Rosa,” 173–74; and Patrizia Massimi’s entry “Una strega, Un soldato,” in Guarino, Brera, 84. 3 Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant; Holberton, “Instead of Iconology”; and Hand, Metzger, and Spronk, Prayers and Portraits. On pendants in Roman collections, see Cavazzini, “Lesser Nobility,” 96–98.

Tal, G., Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024 doi 10.5117/9789463722599_epi

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Figure 107. Salvator Rosa, Witch, ca. 1655, oil on canvas, 41.5 × 31 cm. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome.

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Figure 108. Salvator Rosa, Soldier, ca. 1655, oil on canvas, 42.5 × 34 cm. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome.

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nearly twenty pairs of pendants dealing with a wide range of subjects. 4 Possibilities for interpretation abound. The witch and the soldier might be drawn into a closer communion by some fitting narrative, either an idiosyncratic storytelling concocted by the viewer to satisfy the requirements of coherence, or one with classical antecedents, seeming to capture the intended visual collocation as a flow of events with mythical resonance. It is amply possible to imagine a cause-and-effect scenario, even of the simplest kind, involving a witch casting a spell on the soldier at several removes. John Callow, for example, writes that the “dramatic meaning [of the pendants] is clear. The witch is raising the malignant spirits that will send the soldier to his death in the forthcoming battle.”5 Yet equally conceivably, the soldier, who is visibly crest-fallen (down to the detail of the flaccid helmet plumes), has lost the battle and is invoking some measure of a belated succor from the witch. Beyond providing the viewer with an idiosyncratic narrative impetus, the focus on a single witch evokes a host of similar stand-alone literary witches, such as Lucan’s Erichtho, who resuscitates a soldier to coax from him a prophecy about an impending battle (The Civil War 6.667–830). Rosa stops short of divulging the meaning inherent in the witch’s actions: she may or may not be casting a spell on the soldier, and if she is, the objective of her spell is a secret she keeps to herself. Far less does Rosa bolster the viewer in his belief that the spell has any likelihood of success. Rosa, as did other artists examined in this book, worked to maintain the aura of mystery around witchcraft in ways that elicit fear, perplexity, and curiosity from the enchanted viewer. As a result, the appreciation of witchcraft imagery required a personal stepping-back from the contents of the canvas; the viewer who asked himself whether he believed what he saw must have first needed to ask himself what it was that he did see in the works. Deciphering the iconography of witchcraft becomes a necessary challenge with which the viewer has to engage in order to satisfy himself of a fuller apprehension. Thus, to choose but a few illustrative examples copiously explored elsewhere in this book, the phallus possesses multivalent meanings, the devil induces a plurality of visceral and cerebral paroxysms, the chimera symbolizes the witch and her realm, and Medea is about to rejuvenate Aeson in the midst of imagery which makes a baleful outcome at least as probable as the intended good. In each case, the viewer is caught oscillating between opposite poles of analysis, the ambiguous and the unambiguous, the unitary and the fractured, endeavoring to extract a coherent overarching meaning, only to realize that much of the interpretation must perforce remain open-ended. If sheer iconography is of small avail to justify the exact concatenating bonds between the witch and the soldier, what general logic might nevertheless govern their 4 For a list of Rosa’s pendants, see Tal, “Switching Places,” 25n. 6. 5 Callow, Embracing the Darkness, 88.

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connection? The pendant format often lends itself to a hierarchical organization, with one painting overtaking its companion in importance or merit. The structural hierarchy is reinforced by a semantic structure based on the long-observed given that the right side of the visual field is superior to the left.6 Accordingly, in marital companion pieces, the husband is positioned to the right of his wife, as seen from their vantage; that is, he is depicted in the dexter side (the left pendant) and she resides on the sinister side (the right pendant). Rosa was certainly familiar with this principle, as evinced, for instance, in the pendants Philosophy and Poetry, which were personified by himself and his mistress, Lucrezia Paolino, respectively. By contrast, Witch and Soldier—hung according to the fundamental rule of pendants that the figures must face each other—conspicuously violate this principle.7 Although not a married couple, the blatant reversal of gender hierarchy is a jolt to awareness. In reversing their relative positions, Rosa wittily manifests the symbolic construction of the “world upside-down” in which order-inverting women arrogate the power proper to men and wield it uncouthly over them with none of the deference owed to their sex. Rosa’s witch, equipped with supernatural powers and unwomanly in her refusal to submit, is certainly accountable for the ills she brings about by dint of her transgressive actions. Robbing the soldier of his virility, a putative manhood which his martial presentation serves to amplify, she usurps his rightful dexter position while he is forced to occupy her sinister counterpart. Rosa’s reversal of the standard left-right orientation, a device of inversion amply explored in the context of left-handed necromancers and witches in chapter 1, joins other forms of gender reversal documented in this book: a disheveled witch rides a dismembered phallus, a subservient male drifts beneath a vigorous witch quite literally taking the upper hand, an untrammeled hag sets off in licentious pursuit of a desirable young man, and Circe unmans her victim of both manhood and virility by taking off his head and grafting it onto an animal body. Like some other artists examined here, Rosa painted a witch in a manner which synthesized Italian and Northern models. His selection of an old, partially naked witch in preference to the vernal witch-figures usually chosen in Italian art closely accords with the model of Dürer, Baldung, and De Gheyn. Yet, Rosa also drew inspiration from Michelangelo’s Cumaean Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel (fig. 109). Both matriarchs are massy, have dark skin, excessively muscle-bound arms, and sagging breasts.8 Each is slumped in her seat, curve-backed and bending over a large 6 For the rule and its exceptions, see Van der Velden, “Diptych Altarpieces,” 129–33; and Campbell, “Diptychs with Portraits,” 36–41. This configuration echoes the social etiquette that a woman must walk on the man’s left and heraldry, in which the terms “dexter” and “sinister” indicate the two sides of a coat of arms on a shield as seen by the man holding it. 7 For two other cases of men and women switching sides in pendants, see Tal, “Switching Places,” 22. 8 Mary Garrard argues that old female figures on the Sistine ceiling, including the Cumaean Sibyl, allude to witches. Garrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, 86–87.

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Figure 109. Michelangelo, Cumaean Sibyl, 1508–12, fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

tome, legs clenched and bare feet touching each other. Each is confined alone in a vertical rectangular space. Rosa’s small-canvas reference to Michelangelo’s admired masterpiece highlights the witch as an antithetical counterpart to the sibyl. Both are skilled in the prophetic arts, but while the sibyl is a prophetess of the birth of Christ, the witch is a heretic and Christian apostate. At the same time, the pictorial resemblance alludes to the analogy between pious sibyls and wicked witches found in classical literature. As has been observed, Lucan portrayed the Thessalian witch

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Erichtho as the opposite of Virgil’s Cumaean Sibyl; both are capable of resurrecting the dead, yet while the Sibyl is pious, Erichtho is wicked.9 Rosa, similar to other artists discussed in this book, left the ontological status of witchcraft unresolved. A credulous viewer may conclude that the pendants provide support for the thesis that witchcraft is real, just as a skeptic may see in them nothing short of the preposterous. Absent a clear indication of fantasy-status—as, for example, Spada’s text revealing the depicted pursuit as a dream or a melancholic pose signaling a delusionary mind—the image enjoins upon the viewer a multiplicity of interpretative possibilities in constant flux. If Rosa’s juxtaposition of the witch with a “real” soldier seems to support the thesis that she too, is real, then one item immediately casts this view into doubt: the laurel crown she wears, a quick, satirical, and countervailing element to the postulate of unadorned reality. The laurel, symbol of virtue and merit, appears to honor the witch as a poet, whose zealously compiled “poems” may be supposed to be nothing but nonsensical incantations and hollow signs.10 The inclusion of an amusing detail in an otherwise somber painting creates an ambivalent tone, which also characterizes Parmigianino’s Witch Riding on a Phallus and Vassallo’s Medea, whose magical potion is comically ruined by a mischievous devil defecating into it with great aplomb. In short, Rosa, much like other artists discussed earlier, offers a witty translation of the realm of witches into pictorial form by bringing into play the semantic structure of right and left, satirical commentary, iconographic traditions, artistic borrowings, and classical literature. The conception of witchcraft in early modern Italy is visually preserved today on the label of the “Strega” brand of liqueur (fig. 110). Invented in Benevento in 1860, this golden liqueur is still made according to a secret recipe of approximately seventy herbal ingredients. The label exhibits the hackneyed image of the witch as an old crone, thickly bristling with the familiar motifs. The witch’s puckered visage is drawn in profile, haloed by an enormous full moon; her snake hair alludes to her Medusa-like power to enchant with the Evil Eye; a sizeable broomstick is tucked under her arm, ready for takeoff; and a cradled owl calls forth etymological and conceptual allusions inherent in the strega designation. While there’s nothing particularly Italian in this collection of cliches, the assembly directly below has its roots in Italian folklore. A group of partly disrobed young women and demonic satyrs dance ecstatically hand in hand around a tree. This lively vignette refers to the witches’ infamous meeting place near a walnut tree just outside the village of Benevento, which is also the location of the liqueur’s distillery.11 9 This parallelism is part of Lucan’s direct adaptation of his sixth book of Pharsalia (The Civil War) from the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid. Masters, Poetry and Civil War, 179–96. 10 Hannah Segrave argues that the witch’s laurel is a reference to istoria, especially by the allusion to Clio, the Muse of History. Segrave, “Conjuring Genius,” 446–50. 11 The image is similar but not identical to Isernia, Istoria della città di Benevento, 1:214.

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Figure 110. Label of Strega liqueur. https://www.delcampe.net/es/coleccionismo/etichette/ altri-1/etichetta-vino-liquore-strega-g-alberti-benevento-724019203.html?utm_source=delcampe. net&utm_medium=push_auto&utm_campaign=labels/other-1_CARTOLINERIA.

Much like the artworks examined in the present book, the Strega liqueur label displays an eclectic witchcraft lore gleaned from Italian and European sources. As I amply demonstrated, early modern Italian images of witchcraft are infinitely more heterogenous, inventive, subtle, and sophisticated than the threadbare images of witchcraft surviving on alcohol bottles and in popular culture at large. Witchcraft is a dynamic, shifting subject intimately associated with the artistic traditions, intellectual ideas, and aesthetic theories of Italian culture. That the artworks resist a monolithic reading serves only to heighten their magic. The works discussed in Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy are therefore demonic not only in their subject matter but in their very approach: deceptive, mutable, and pleasurably horrifying.

Works Cited Bruno, Raffaele. Roma: Pinacoteca Capitolina. Bologna: Calderini, 1978. Callow, John. Embracing the Darkness: A Cultural History of Witchcraft. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2018. Campbell, Lorne. “Diptychs with Portraits.” In Essays in Context: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk, 36–41. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Campoli, Alessandra. “Le ‘stregonerie’ di Salvator Rosa.” In L’incantesimo di Circe: Temi di magia nella pittura da Dosso Dossi a Salvator Rosa, ed. Stefania Macioce, 158–84. Rome: Logart, 2004. Cassani, Silvia, ed. Salvator Rosa: Tra mito e magia. Naples: Electa Napoli, 2008. Cavazzini, Patrizia. “Lesser Nobility and Other People of Means.” In Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550–1750, ed. Gail Feigenbaum, 89–102. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2014. Garrard, Mary D. Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Guarino, Sergio, ed. Brera: Il Seicento a Roma: Da Caravaggio a Salvator Rosa. Milan: Electa, 1999. Guarino, Sergio, Patrizia Masini, and Maria Elisa Tittoni. Guercino e le collezioni Capitoline. Rome: Carte Segrete, 1991. Hand, John Oliver, Catherine A. Metzger, and Ron Spronk, eds. Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten; Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Holberton, Paul. “Instead of Iconology: Virtuosity (‘mostrare l’arte’) and Symmetry (Pendants) in Italian Renaissance Art.” Word and Image 4 (1988): 317–22. Isernia, Enrico. Istoria della città di Benevento dalla sua origine fino al 1894. 2 vols. Benevento: A. d’Alessandro e figlio, 1895. Langdon, Helen, with Xavier F. Salomon, and Caterina Volpi. Salvator Rosa. London: Paul Holberton, 2010. Masters, Jamie. Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s “Bellum Civile.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Moiso-Diekamp, Cornelia. Das Pendant in der Holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1987. Segrave, Hannah Lee Pamela. “Conjuring Genius: Salvator Rosa and the Dark Arts of Witchcraft.” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 2022. Tal, Guy. “Switching Places: Salvator Rosa’s Pendants of A Witch and A Soldier, and the Principle of Dextrality.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 30 (2011): 20–25. van der Velden, Hugo. “Diptych Altarpieces and the Principle of Dextrality.” In Essays in Context: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk, 124–55. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006. Volpi, Caterina. Salvator Rosa (16l5–1673): “Pittore famoso.” Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2014.

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Index Page numbers in italics indicate figures. Aeson see Medea: rejuvenating Aeson; Medea Rejuvenating Aeson Aikema, Bernard 306 Alberti, Leandro 102 Alberti, Leon Battista 84, 87, 95, 109, 212 alchemy 176, 224–26, 226 n.88, 243, 262 n.24, 265, 291, 292 Alciato, Andrea: on Circe 213 n.59 on Medea 218 Alcina 45, 196 n.17, 270 n.50 Allori, Alessandro 33 Ulysses and Circe 192, 193–96, 199, 201, 204 Altdorfer, Albrecht 52, 151 amulets 132, 150, 167–74, 168, 169, 172, 173, 303 Andrea, Zoan 106 n.69 angels 296–97 Anguissola, Sofonisba: Boy Bitten by a Crayfish 273 Anselmi, Alessandra 258 Apollo 90–93, 92, 237–43, 239, 240, 241, 243 n.127 Apollonius Rhodius: on Circe 192, 211 Apuleius 201 n.31, 262 n.26 Aquinas, Thomas 296 Arasse, Daniel 296 Arcolano, Giovanni 63 Aretino, Pietro 70, 115, 168 Aretino, Pseudo 70 Argan, Giulio Carlo 289 Ariosto, Ludovico 105 Orlando furioso 45, 99 n.44, 196 n.17 Aristotle: on fear and pleasure 295, 295 n.101 on humoral theory 148 on hybrid literary mode 108 on melancholy 203 n.36 and Phyllis 99, 151, 156 on women 110, 110 n.87 Armida 196 n.17, 270 artists: as alter deus 109 compared to magicians and witches 116, 204, 215–16, 282, 282 nn.76–78 self-referentiality of 84–85, 116, 216 signatures 57, 133, 279 Assereto, Gioacchino: Apollo Flaying Marsyas (fresco) 237 n.117 Apollo Flaying Marsyas (canvas) 237–43, 239 Cain and Abel 238 n.118 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 21, 229 n.97, 237, 238, 239–40, 242–43 Suicide of Cato 242 n.125

Atropos 157 n.65 Augustine 102 on transformations 199, 199 n.26 Aurelianus, Caelius 63 auto-da-fé 23 n.16 Ayrolo, Agostino 237 Ayrolo, Giovanni Tomaso 242 Bacchus, processions of 89, 106, 106–7 n.69, 116, 139 Bakhtin, Mikhail 62, 109 n.81, 112, 148, 235 Baldini, Baccio 53 Hostanes 54 Baldinucci, Filippo 277 n.64 Baldung Grien, Hans 19, 26, 26 n.31, 29, 98, 151, 321 Bewitched Groom 42 n.7 Old Woman 42 n.6 Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath 114, 115, 147, 152 Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, Italian copies 26 n.32 Three Witches 98 n.41 Weather Witches 98 n.41 Witch and Dragon 98 n.41 baptism: Devil destroying sign of 305 unbaptized newborns 263–64 Barbari, Jacopo de’ 42, 43 Barberini, Francesco: approach towards witches 267 owner of Witch Alarmed by a Devil 24 n.23, 260, 266 Bardon, Françoise and Henri 190 Barolsky, Paul 208 Barra, Didier 270 Bartsch, Adam 93 n.28, 116, 138 Battisti, Eugenio 19–20, 42, 43 battle for the pants 157 Baur, Johann Wilhelm: Apollo Flaying Marsyas 237–39, 240, 240 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 233–37, 233 n.105, 234 Baxandall, Michael 53 Bellori, Giovanni Pietro: on Annibale Carracci 213 n.58 on Baglione 282 n.78 Bellotti, Pietro: Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 220 n.79 Bembo, Pietro 107 Benevento see witches, Italian locations of Berni, Francesco 83 n.6 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 281 Anima dannata 281 n.70 Berry Drago, Elisabeth 291

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Bettella, Patrizia 62 n.49, 111 Biondo, Giovanni del: Saint Zenobius Trampling Crudelitas 263 n.29 birds 26, 44, 67, 105, 117, 117, 118, 118 as devils 165 as euphemism for penis 149, 160, 165 see also owls Boccaccio, Giovanni: on Medea 218, 227, 230 on women 110 Bodin, Jean 199 n.22 body of witches: clothed/naked 42, 52, 147–48, 147 n.35, 147 n.37, 151, 157 diverging from the stereotype 52, 52 n.24 grotesque 21, 30 n.46, 32, 42, 52, 61–62, 66–67, 112, 176 hybrid 110–15 muscular 61–62, 67, 99, 112, 233–34, 317 see also eyes, witches’; hair, of witches; headgears, witches’; stigma diabolicum; tongues Bompiani, Ginevra 104 Bonifacio, Giovanni 50 n.16, 272 books, magic 53, 54, 192, 194, 233, 235, 237, 238, 254, 256, 257, 261, 262, 262 n.24, 264, 291, 292, 318, 321–22 Borghini, Vincenzo 224 Borgianni, Orazio: Potiphar’s Wife Lusting after Joseph 65, 66 Bosch, Hieronymus 120, 121 Garden of Earthly Delights 62 n.51 Bottalla, Giovanni Maria: Apollo Flaying Marsyas 237 n.117 Botticelli, Sandro: Primavera 53 Boulogne, Valentin de 285 n.84 Boyvin, René 229, 232 n.104 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 220–22, 222, 230–31 n.101 Bramer, Leonaert 20 n.7 brooms 42, 62, 63 n.56, 88, 152 n.51, 176, 274, 323 Bruegel the Elder, Jan 24 n.23, 121 Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld 121 n.114 Bruegel the Elder, Peter 19 Dulle Griet 62 n.51 Bruno, Giordano 198 n.19 Bulwer, John 275 n.62 Burckhardt, Jacob 25 Burton, Robert 64 bystanders 29–30, 134, 140, 141, 142, 147, 149, 150, 154–57, 158, 159–60, 161, 214, 216, 232, 232, 239, 239, 240–42, 241, 274, 275, 298 Caliari, Benedetto: Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 220 n.81 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 220 n.81 Callow, John 320 Camille, Michael 171

Campbell, Stephen 84, 87, 115, 230 n.101, 231–32 Canidia 26, 26 n.30, 110, 152 n.53, 190, 258 cannibalism 22, 27, 113, 230 Canon Episcopi 107 n.69, 147 n.33, 200 Capestrano, Giovanni da 137 n.11 Caraglio, Jacopo 143 Adoration of the Shepherds 141, 141 Jupiter and Antiope 222–24, 223 Caravaggio 65, 237, 240, 258, 259, 268–69, 277, 282–83, 287, 307 Boy Bitten by a Lizard 258, 270–73, 271, 272 n.53, 277 Calling of St. Matthew 284, 285, 287–89 Fortune-Teller 65–66, 68, 277, 282 Judith Beheading Holofernes 278 The Lute Player 279 Martyrdom of St. Matthew 278, 278, 297 Medusa 258, 280–81, 280 n.69, 280 Musicians 279 Taking of Christ 284, 284, 285 n.84 Cardano, Girolamo 203 n.36 on witches’ melancholy 198–99 on witches’ punishment 198 n.21 caricatures 45, 61, 70, 70 n.74, 71–72, 71 n.76, 213, 281; see also humor; jokes; satirical mode carnival culture 30 n.46, 98, 117, 121, 148, 167–68 Caroselli, Angelo 20, 266–67, 274, 274 n.59, 289 n.87 as Paolini’s teacher 277 and Pseudo-Caroselli 269–70, 269 n.46, 270 n.48, 273–74, 275, 277 Vanitas 289 n.88 Witch Alarmed by a Devil 253, 255, 260, 260 nn.12–13, 263, 266, 268, 269–70, 273–77, 290, 298 Caroselli, Pseudo 270 n.51 and Caroselli 269–70, 269 n.46, 270 n.48, 273–74, 275, 277 Circe and Melancholic Ulysses and Melancholic Circe 194, 195, 195–96, 196 n.18, 201, 269, 270 n.48 Witch Alarmed by a Devil 253, 254, 268, 269–73, 283, 290 Carpi, Girolamo da: Landscape with a Magical Procession 119, 120 Carpi, Jacopo Berengario da 61 n.48 Carracci, Agostino: The Adoration of the Magi 81 Last Communion of Saint Jerome 268–69 see also Carracci, Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Annibale: Circe Transforming Men into Beasts (Palazzo Farnese) 217 n.70 Circe Transforming Men into Beasts (Windsor) 205, 213–17, 214 Omphale and Hercules 214 n.60 Venus and Anchises 214 n.60 see also Carracci, Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino

365

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Carracci, Ludovico 213 n.57; see also Carracci, Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino: Medea and Pelias’s Daughters 232, 232 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 227–32, 229, 243 Carroll, Noël 295 Castiglione, Baldassare: on imagination 85 n.14 on jokes 175, 175 n.119 Castiglione, Giovanni Battista 196, 196 n.17, 234 n.106, 242 n.124 Circe and Orpheus 196 n.17 Medea 196 n.18 Melancholia 202, 203 Melancholic Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 196–204, 197 Vanitas/Melancholia 203–4, 203 castration 31, 132, 133, 152, 157–60, 161 decapitated head symbolizing 216–17 see also impotence; penises: stolen by witches Catalano, Dora 281 cauldrons 27, 62 n.51, 219, 220–22, 221, 222, 224, 226 n.88, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 232, 233, 233 n.105, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 255, 263, 274 Cavazzini, Patrizia 275 Cellini, Benvenuto 282 Cennini, Cennino 106 cephalomancy 262–63 Cessolis, Jacobus de 53, 55 Chastel, André 108–9 chimeras 31, 117, 118, 120, 120–21 analogous to witches 110–15 in artistic discourses 84, 104–10, 119, 120–21 vs. hybrids 85 n.14 morphology of 104–5, 117–19 in Stregozzo 82, 85–87, 102, 103–16 see also monsters Ciampanti, Ansano di Michele: Madonna del Soccorso 302 Cicero 212 Cicogna, Strozzi 199–200 Circe 20, 21, 26, 33, 44–45, 45 n.10, 189–217, 242, 244, 321 compared to the artist 204, 215–16, 282 n.77 etymology of 215 n.61 as hybrid maker 214, 215 lust of 65 n.62, 206, 207, 213–14, 214 and Medea 220, 220 n.80, 234 melancholic 191, 192, 194, 197, 194–204, 244 and Picus 65, 67 skepticism towards transformations by 191, 199–200 Circe Transforming Men into Beasts: Alessandro Allori 192, 193–96, 199, 201, 204 Annibale Carracci 213–17, 214 Antonio Tempesta 205, 206 Benedetto Caliari 220 n.81 Elisabetta Sirani 282 n.77 Francesco Solimena 195, 198 n.19

frescoes in palazzi 194 n.12 Giovanni Battista Castiglione 196–204, 197 Giovanni Stradano 193–94, 193, 194 n.12 Hartmann Schedel 191 n.9 Pellegrino Tibaldi 206–13, 207 Pseudo-Caroselli 194, 195, 195–96, 196 n.18, 201, 269, 270 n.48 Virgil Solis 205 n.41 circles, magic 44, 44, 53, 54, 233 n.105, 234, 234, 237, 238, 261, 262 n.24, 264, 264 n.31, 274, 275, 291, 292, 303 Clark, Stuart 27, 29 n.43, 98, 104 n.60 Classical art 42 n.7, 57 n.39, 106–7, 167, 171–74, 172, 223–24 n.83 claws, devils’: as parody of the Hand of God 305 as sign of violence 305 surviving shapeshifting 165, 304–5 witches marked by 305 see also devils, cropped by picture frame Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 31–32 Colantuono, Anthony 169 n.99 Cole, Bruce 55 Comanini, Gregorio 66 n.65 conjuration of demons 53, 54, 260–61, 264 Conti, Natale: on Circe 200, 201 n.31, 215 n.61 contrapposto 66, 66 n.65 Cornelisz. van Oostsanen, Jacob: Saul and the Witch of Endor 107 n.69 Correggio 91–93 n.26 Cortesi, Paolo 107 counter-magic 45 n.10, 171; see also amulets Cranach, Lucas: Melancholia 195, 195 n.14, 204 n.38 Werewolf 109 n.82 Cruelty: Medea representing 217–18 personifications of 263, 263 n.29 cuckoldry 82, 99, 134, 150, 155–59, 175 daimones 235 dance 22 n.12, 88, 89, 274–75, 323, 324 Daneau, Lambert 190 n.4 Dante 111 Davis, Bruce 90 Death, visit of 281, 287–89, 287, 288, 291, 292 Delaborde, Henri 90 Del Rio, Martín: on cephalomancy 262 on explicit and implicit pacts 264 n.30 Investigations into Magic, Italian reprint 262 n.27 delusions 19, 28, 30, 33–34, 109 n.82, 136, 148, 160–62, 163–65, 175, 191, 191 n.9 active vs. passive 165 caused by melancholy 198–200, 201, 203, 204, 323 demonic copulation see sexual intercourse

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demonologists 102 n.47, 159 n.74, 190, 191, 199, 200 n.29, 297, 298; see also Bodin; Del Rio; Eymeric; Grillando; Kramer; Lancre; Mazzolini; Molitor; Piperno; Ponzinibio; Rémy; Scot; Spina; Visconti, Girolamo; Visconti, Zaccaria; Wier demons see devils Dente, Marco: Massacre of the Innocents 107, 107 n.70 Detti, Bernardino: Madonna of the Pergola 173 Deutsch, Niklaus Manuel 42 Devil: anal kiss of 22, 52, 98, 100 backward walking toward 52–53 compared to artists 282 vs. devils 255 as God 101, 305 genitals 165 pacts with 21–22, 101–2, 146, 257, 258, 261, 264–66, 264, 265, 266, 267, 295, 297–98 as painter 282 visiting humans 287, 287, 298, 299 worshipping 19, 23, 52, 101, 137, 146–47, 263–64 see also devils; infants: sacrificed to the Devil devils: attacking witches 253–307 belief in existence of 295–96 corporeality 296–97, 299 deceiving 159–60, 163 n.89, 261, 263, 282, 304 defecating 233, 234, 235–37 disguised as birds 165 disguised as men 165, 166, 304–5 disguised as penises 165–67, 305 hybrid body 303–5 immateriality 296–97 liminality 295–96, 298–303 multiple forms 303–4 performativity of 305 as spirits of the dead 260–61 tail 134, 149, 165, 166, 174 n.112, 305 in theater 259, 259 n.10, 266 transformations of 165, 167, 303–5 unpredictability of 303 visibility 296–98 see also claws, devils’; Devil; devils, cropped by picture frame; incubus: as devil; sexual intercourse: with devils devils, cropped by picture frame: and Baroque art 283 Caravaggio’s inspiration on 283–89 effects of movement caused by 259, 283 emotional effects caused by 289–95 see also claws, devils’ Diana 83, 90–91, 92, 147, 147 n.33, 174 distaffs 21, 32, 45–46, 47, 140–41 as attribute of witches 46, 118, 118, 133, 134, 151, 158 as cuckoldry device 155–56, 157, 159 as euphemism for penis 149, 152 n.51, 159

mishandled 46, 48, 49, 50–52, 56, 58, 152, 154–56, 157, 157 n.65 symbolism of 50–52, 154, 162, 163 n.88 see also spindles; spinning Dolce, Lodovico: on Medea and alchemy 226 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 229 n.98 Domenichino 268–69 Doni, Anton Francesco 108, 194 n.13 Dorrian, Mark 104 Dossi, Battista 82 n.4, 90 Night 121 Dossi, Dosso: Anger 276 n.63 Landscape with a Magical Procession 119–20 n.111, 121 Satyr Chasing a Nymph 66 Sorceress 20, 43–45, 44, 121, 195, 275, 282 dreams 204 n.38, 306 n.131, 323 categorization of 64–65 as chronic disease 61 grottesche compared to 108 implied by covered eyes 163 and nightmares 59, 62–65, 71–73 see also nightmares Dürer, Albrecht 26, 26 n.31, 88 n.19, 106, 321 Beast of the Apocalypse 104–5 on creativity 110 Four Witches 42 n.7, 98 n.41, 298, 300 Melencolia I 162 Witch Riding on a Goat 46, 49, 52, 55–56, 98 n.41, 98, 99, 113, 147, 150–51, 155, 156, 162 n.85, 170–71, 195 n.14 Witch Riding on a Goat, Italian copy 26 n.32 DWF see monogrammist DWF Ekserdjian, David 46 El-Hanany, Efrat 302–3 n.117 Elsheimer, Adam 20, 20 n.7, 121 Emison, Patricia 83–84, 89–90, 97–98, 100 Envy 132 and Evil Eye 170–71 hags personifying 99, 100, 170 and witches 171 nn.105–6 Erichtho 26, 83, 83 n.5, 190 vs. the Cumaean Sibyl 322–23 resuscitation by 113, 260, 320 voice of 113, 115 Evil Eye 150, 167–74, 172, 323 eyes, witches’ 275, 278 blinded 171 and the grotesque body 62 hooded 163, 171, 174 malicious power of 61, 171 see also Evil Eye Eymeric, Nicolau 101 fantasia 31, 106, 108, 116, 117, 119, 120, 138, 217 Faust, Johann 261

367

Index 

Faustus, Doctor 258, 259, 266 Ferrara, Stefano da: Saturn 163, 164 FGS see Rosa, Salvator, follower of films, horror and thriller: The Black Belly of the Tarantula 294 cut-off hands in 293–95 giallo 293 off-screen space in 293 Fiorenza, Giancarlo 45, 282 flight, witches’ see ride, witches’ Focillon, Henri 283 Folia 70 Franco, Nicolò 131–32, 133 Freud, Sigmund 132, 133 Fuseli, Henri: The Nightmare 63 Galen 148 Garofalo, Benvenuto: Landscape with a Magical Procession 119 Gelli, Giovanni Battista: Circe 200, 212 gender 30–31 hybridity 61–62 inversion 98–100, 109, 136–37, 150, 151–56, 153, 169, 321 transgression 147–48 Genesi, Mario 259, 259 n.11 Gentileschi, Artemisia: Judith Beheading Holofernes 229 n.99 Susanna and the Elders 276 n.63 gestures: adverse palms 60, 61, 61 n.46, 255, 275, 275 n.62 of astonishment 254, 271, 272, 272 n.52 of blessing 53, 56, 305 cheek-on-hand melancholic 162, 192, 194–98, 194, 195, 197, 199, 254, 263 n.29, 323 hand on shoulder 60, 61, 70 n.75, 133, 174, 174 n.112, 298–99, 301 of invitation 53–55, 54, 55 left-handed 45–59, 48, 49, 54, 134, 155, 321 signum crucis 53, 275 of terrore 272, 272 n.54 Gheyn II, Jacques de 19, 29 n.41, 321 The Preparation of the Witches’ Sabbath 56, 171 n.106, 236, 236 Three Crones 42 ghosts see devils: as spirits of the dead Gildenhard, Ingo 219 Giorgione 66 n.64, 66–67 n.65 Giotto: The Ascension 299 Folly 53–55, 55 n.31 Invidia 171 n.107 The Pact of Judas 298–99, 301 Giovanni, Domenico di (Burchiello) 70, 171 Giulio Romano: Apollo and Diana (Palazzo del Te) 90–93, 92

Apollo and Diana (Villa Madama) 91 The Battle of the Milvian Bridge 93–94, 94 inspired by Michelangelo 90–93, 96–97, 103 inspired by Raphael 93–96 Judith and Holofernes 231, 231 Modi 90, 91, 99–100, 142–43, 143, 152, 153 The Sacrifice of Pan 107 Stregozzo 20, 33, 90–97, 99–100, 103, 147, 151, 170, 304 The Vision of Constantine 93 goats 49, 55, 82, 82, 83, 89, 103, 106, 111, 119, 151, 156, 162 n.85, 195 n.14, 197, 198 n.19, 201 n.31, 236 n.111, 262 God 295, 305 and artistic creation 109–10 creation by 101–2, 104, 263–64 denied 100–102, 200, 305 as the Devil 97, 100–101 Michelangelo’s figure of 89, 90, 90–93, 94, 96, 97, 98 n.38, 103, 110 ridiculed 101–3 and witchcraft 102–3, 200, 305 Gordon, Bernard de 63 n.56 gossip see rumors Goya, Francisco: A Fine Teacher 176, 177 The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters 176 We Must Be off with the Dawn 176, 178 Graf, Urs 52, 151 Hermit and Devil 174 n.112 Greene, Thomas 97, 97 n.37, 103 Gregory XV, Pope 267 Grillando, Paolo 52–53 grottesche 87, 106, 108–9, 116 Guaineri, Antonio 64 Gualterotti, Raffaello 118–19, 118 Guastavini, Giulio 260–61 Guazzo, Francesco Maria: on devils’ deception 163 n.89 on devils’ physical forms 304 on diabolical pacts 261, 264, 265, 265–66 Guédron, Martial 281–82 Guercino 59–61, 62, 70–71 Ape-Headed Witch 71 n.76 Burial of St. Petronilla 298 n.114 Half-Naked Witch with a Torch 71 n.76 A Monstruous Animal and a Peasant 71, 72 Three Bathers Surprised by a Monster 71, 72 A Witch, Two Bats, and a Demon in Flight 71, 71 hair, of witches: Bacchante-like 222, 226 charms concealed in 112–13 disheveled 42, 49, 82, 82–83, 99, 112, 151 facial 61–62, 62 n.49 Medusa-like 323, 324 Hansen, Morten Steen 208 Hartlieb, Johannes 261 n.23, 263 headgears, witches’ 60, 62, 134, 163

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Hecate 83, 219, 220 Heemskerck, Maarten van: The Devil as Painter 282 The Melancholy Temperament 162, 163 Heintz the Younger, Joseph 20, 24 n.23, 121, 233 n.105, 236 n.112 Hercules 105, 107, 156, 214 n.60 heresy 21, 23, 24, 25, 30, 52, 87, 100–102, 137, 199–200, 258, 261, 265–66, 322 Canon Episcopi on 200 Heinrich Kramer on 101 Johannes Hartlieb on 263 Leandro Alberti on 102 Nicolau Eymeric on 101 Herr, Michael: Zauberey 236 HFE see Master HFE Hoefnagel, Jacob: Ill-Matched Couple 68 Holbein, Hans: Les images de la mort 287–89 Hollanda, Francisco de 106 Hollar, Wenceslaus: A Young Man Caressing an Old Woman 68, 69 Homer: on Circe 33, 192, 206, 208, 210–11, 211–12, 214 n.60, 220 n.80 Odyssey, Italian editions 193 Hopfer, Daniel: Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women 287, 287, 289 n.89 Horace 212 on Canidia 26, 110–11, 152 n.53, 258–59 on Circe 213 n.59 on Folia 70 on monsters 105–6, 108, 111 on Priapus 158 n.69, 258–59 on Sagana 258–59 horror 240–41, 253, 259, 275, 284, 289–95, 307 paradox of 295 and pleasure 295 vs. terror 291–95 Hostanes 53, 54 Hughes, Jessica 215 Hults, Linda 28, 30–31, 42, 84, 90, 108, 157, 170 humor 30, 71, 90 n.24, 95–96, 281 against the Evil Eye 169–70 genital 131–32, 136, 136 n.8, 146, 216 in Horace 258–59 as method of cure 70 in witchcraft images 30, 30 n.46, 31, 59, 65–66, 68, 136, 148–50, 152, 167, 169–70, 174–76, 191, 205, 208, 212, 213, 216, 235, 244, 258–59, 283, 323 see also caricatures; jokes; satirical mode; serio ludere hybrids see body of witches: hybrid; chimeras; devils: hybrid body; gender: hybridity; monsters; transformations: coalescing with hybrids

Iles Johnston, Sarah 218, 296 Ill-matched couples 31, 67–68, 69 illusions 213 demonic 28, 30, 150, 159, 161, 175 magic as 159–60, 161, 199, 244 methods of creating 28, 159, 161 separated from reality 28, 30, 65, 167, 204, 256, 283 images of witches: ambiguity of 28–29, 44–45, 136, 229–32, 243, 320 didactic-moralizing role 21, 32, 264, 273, 289 humorous 30, 30 n.46, 31, 59, 65–66, 68, 136, 148–50, 152, 167, 169–70, 174–76, 191, 205, 208, 212, 213, 216, 235, 244, 258–59, 283, 323 Italian vs. Northern 19–20, 25–27, 30, 119–20, 195, 321–22 in private collections 24, 24 n.23, 237, 243, 260, 266, 317 n.1 refuting/substantiating the reality of witchcraft 29–30, 84, 137, 161, 175, 176, 191–204 as response to witch-hunts 23, 24, 26 n.31, 30, 83–84 imagination see delusions; dreams; fantasia; illusions; nightmares imitation 96–97, 107 n.71 dialectical 103, 116 eclectic 97 n.37, 108, 116 and emulation 28, 107 heuristic 97, 103, 116 and invention 28, 87, 103, 106–8, 116, 117 reproductive 97 see also invention impotence 89, 157, 158–59; see also castration; cuckoldry; penises: stolen by witches incantations and spells 24, 44, 45 n.10, 70, 113, 190, 220, 227, 236–37, 261, 263, 267, 320, 323 incantatrici 260 incubus 25, 62–65, 71 copulations with 25, 62–63, 157, 162, 165 n.90, 298 as devil 62–63, 157, 162, 298 as disease 63–64 as nightmare 63 as witch 63, 63 n.56, 64 infants 95, 107, 107 n.70, 134, 157 in images of Cruelty 254, 263, 263 n.29 killed/devoured 19, 22, 26, 26 n.30, 82, 82, 83, 94–95, 95, 99, 102, 109 n.82, 112, 113, 171 n.105, 190, 196 n.18, 255, 283 sacrificed to the Devil 83, 263–64, 264, 265–66 urinating 214, 216–17, 217 n.69 ingegno 138, 217 ingredients, magic 110–11, 115, 115 n.104, 116, 235–36, 262, 264–65, 323 Inquisition 23, 156, 160 banning witchcraft paintings 24, 30 handling illicit magic and witchcraft 23, 23 n.16, 24, 24 n.20, 153 n.56, 265 witch prosecutions regulated by 264, 267

369

Index 

inquisitors 22 n.11, 32, 41–42, 52, 101, 107 n.69, 112, 113, 153, 161, 165, 171, 200 n.29, 267, 298 n.113, 307 invention: and imitation 28, 87, 103, 106–8, 116, 117 through repetition 57, 268–69 see also imitation inversion 28, 121, 150–51 as concept of witchcraft 52, 87, 98, 150, 296 in diabolical rituals 52–53 gender 98–100, 151–56 rear-viewed figures 49, 55–56, 88–103, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 100, 151, 207, 208–10, 233, 234, 235 religion 100–103 see also Devil: anal kiss of; left-handedness; left-right orientation; Omphale; Phyllis; ride, witches’: backwards; upside-down world; Witch Riding on a Phallus (Parmigianino) Invidia see Envy Isidore of Seville 63 n.54 Ismeno 243, 260–61 Jacquelot, Pierre 243 n.127 James VI and I, King 261, 267, 267 n.35, 305 n.130 Jansz. Muller, Harmen: The Melancholy Temperament 162, 163 jokes 30, 30 n.45, 131, 148–50, 175 anticlerical 160 called beffe 175 see also caricatures; humor; satirical mode; serio ludere Judith 217 n.69, 229 n.99, 231, 231, 244, 278 Kaysersberg, Johann Geiler von 157–58, 158 Kieckhefer, Richard 22 n.15, 25 n.28, 30, 244 King, Stephen 293 Kleinbub, Christian 297 Koerner, Joseph 29, 151–52 Kramer, Heinrich (Malleus maleficarum): on charms in witches’ hair 113 on demonic copulations 157 on demonic marks on witches’ body 42 on devils’ bodies 297 on devils disguised as penises 167 on devils’ physical forms 304 n.121 on devils’ transformations 165 n.90 on devils’ visibility 298, 298 n.113 on Evil Eye 170, 171 on God’s permission of witchcraft 102–3 on illusory castrations 159–60 on melancholy 162 on reality of transformations 109 n.82, 199, 200 n.29 on witches’ heresy 101–2 on witches’ mental participation in sabbaths 53 on women’s imperfections 110 n.88, 111 Lacan, Jacques 133, 149, 158 lamia 26 n.30, 64 n.60, 112

Lancre, Pierre de 190 n.4 on ancient witches 190 n.3 on devils’ appearances 304, 304 n.123 on devils’ language 176 on devils’ unpredictability 303 on locations of sabbath 303 n.118 on witches’ inconstancy 28 Lanfranco, Giovanni 268–69 left-handedness 45–59, 48, 49, 54, 134, 155, 321 of the Devil 53 n.28 of witches 52–56 left-right orientation: in pendants 321 in printmaking 46–50, 47, 48, 56–57, 139, 155 Leonardo da Vinci 85 n.14 on creating monsters 106, 215–16 on creativity 109–10 on expressive body movements 272 n.52 The Last Supper 272 n.52 Medusa 105 n.61, 119, 216 on old women 67 A Young Man Caressing an Old Woman 68, 69 ligature 159 Lilith 112 liminality 28, 32, 296–306 Link, Luther 296, 304 n.121 Loh, Maria 291 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo 81–82, 83 n.6, 93, 93 n.28, 104–5 Longhi, Roberto 269 n.46 Lorandi, Marco 195 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio: Allegory of the Bad Government 263 n.29 Lorizzo, Loredana 255, 281, 296 Lo stregozzo see Stregozzo love magic 23, 25, 137, 159 Lucan 323 n.9 on Erichtho 26, 83 n.5, 113, 260, 320, 322–23 lycanthropy see werewolves Macchietti, Girolamo: Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 220–26, 221 Machiavelli, Niccolò: on Circe 200, 201 n.31 Macrobius 64–65 Madonna del Soccorso 299–301, 302 maga 20 n.7, 43–44, 118 magic: as crossroads 30, 244 illicit 23, 24 n.20 learned vs. popular 261 locations for 303, 303 n.118 see also books, magic; circles, magic; countermagic; incantations and spells; ingredients, magic; ligature; love magic; potions, magic; transformations; wands majolica plates 99 n.44, 169, 189, 210 n.48 maleficia 21, 83, 146, 170, 171, 243, 267 maliosa 111

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Malleus maleficarum (Kramer): Italian demonologists influenced by 102 n.47, 159 n.74 Italian reprints 199 see also Kramer, Heinrich Malvasia, Carlo Cesare: on the Carracci’s Medea 230 on Raimondi 81, 93, 93 n.28 on Reni 41 on Spada 70 n.74 Manfredi, Bartolomeo 268, 268 n.43 Group of Revellers 285, 285 n.84, 286, 291 Manilli, Giacomo 44 n.9, 120 Mantegna, Andrea 106 Battle of the Sea Gods 99, 100–101, 113, 116–17, 170–71 frescoes in Camera Picta 91 Mapplethorpe, Robert: Louise Bourgeois Holding ‘Fillette’ 132, 132–33 Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus 259, 259 n.11, 264 n.31, 266 Marsyas 237–42, 239, 240, 241, 243 n.127 Martinelli, Giovanni: Death Comes to the Banquet Table 287–89, 288, 291 Youth Surprised by Death 288, 289, 289 n.87 maschare/mascae 41 n.3 Massys, Quinten 68 Master HFE: Marine Gods 116–18, 117 masturbation 52, 49, 134, 137, 145, 146, 151–52 Mazzolini, Silvestro da Prierio (Prierias) 112 Medea 20, 21, 26, 33, 115, 189–91, 196 n.18, 217–44, 282 n.78 and alchemy 224–26, 226 n.88, 243 ambivalent character of 218, 229–32, 243 and Apollo 237–43 beauty of 221, 222, 224 and Circe 220, 234, 244 as Cruelty 217–18 murdering Pelias 226–27, 229, 232, 232 n.104, 243 nudity of 220–22, 221, 222, 224, 227, 228, 229, 229 n.98, 230, 233 n.105 rejuvenating Aeson 218, 219–244, 320, 323 reversing nature 98, 219, 236–37 as stereotypical witch 236–37, 243 symbolizing medicine 242–43 violence of 217–18, 227 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson: Antonio Tempesta 227 n.94, 233 n.105 Anton Maria Vassallo 233–37, 233, 242, 243, 323 Benedetto Caliari 220 n.81 Gioacchino Assereto 21, 229 n.97, 237, 238, 239–40, 242–43 Girolamo Macchietti 220–26, 221 Johann Wilhelm Baur 233–37, 233 n.105, 234 Joseph Heintz the Younger 233 n.105, 236 n.112 Léonard Thiry 220, 222

Lorenzo Sabatini 222 n.82 Pietro Bellotti 220 n.79 René Boyvin 220–22, 222, 230–31 n.101 Medici, Ferdinando I de’ 195 Medici, Francesco I de’ 118 studiolo 194 n.12, 220, 221, 224–26, 225 Medici, Giovan Carlo de’ 196 n.18 Meglio, Giovan Matteo di 111 melancholy 176, 317, 317 n.2 afflicting witches 162, 195, 198–200, 204 caused by devils 198–200 causing delusions 161, 162, 191, 195 n.14, 198–200, 201, 203, 203–4, 244, 323 cheek-on-hand posture of 162, 192, 194–98, 194, 195, 197, 199, 254, 263 n.29, 323 as contemplative state 198, 198 n.19, 201, 202, 203 distaff symbolizing 51, 154 and gender 198, 203 hooded face signaling 162, 163 and inverse copulation 163, 164 personifications of 162, 201–3, 202, 204 n.38 and Saturn 162–63, 163, 164 and Sloth 51, 162–63 and vanitas 201–3, 202, 203 Melissa 45, 196 n.17 memento mori 287, 289 meraviglia 306–7 Meroe 70, 98, 190 metamorphoses see transformations Metamorphoses (Ovid): illustrations in 65, 67, 200, 205, 205 n.41, 206, 210 n.48, 227, 227 n.94, 228, 229, 230, 232 n.104, 233–37, 234, 237–39, 240, 243 Lodovico Dolce’s adaptation of 226 quoted by Reginald Scot 236–37 see also Ovid Michelangelo 106, 115, 208 Bacchanal of Children 106 n.69 Battle of Cascina 90 n.24, 94, 94 n.32, 96–97, 97, 103 Creation of Man 208 Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants 89, 90–93, 94, 96, 97, 98 n.38, 103, 110 Cumaean Sibyl 321–23, 322 Haman 95 ignudi 93, 208, 213 n.56 Last Judgment 103 Medici Chapel 208–10, 209, 213, 213 n.55 on monsters 106 Stregozzo 82 n.4, 93, 93 n.28 Millino, Giovanni Garcia 267 Miradori, Luigi 196 n.18 Miretto, Giovanni Nicolò: Saturn 163, 164 misogyny 30, 110–11 Modio, Giovanni Battista 155–56 Molitor, Ulrich 52 n.24, 147 n.35, 165, 166 monogrammist DWF: Old Woman with a Distaff 57–59, 58

371

Index 

Monster of Ravenna 104 monsters 71, 72, 216 classification of 104, 104 n.59 as devils 31, 255, 257, 290, 291, 293 etymology of 31–32 multiple meanings of 21, 29, 31–32, 32 n.51, 103–4, 111 see also chimeras; devils: hybrid body; transformations: coalescing with hybrids Morandini, Francesco: Prometheus and Nature 224, 225 Murtola, Gaspare 282 music 237–38, 242, 242 n.124 instruments 224, 239, 239, 240, 241 score 202, 203, 255, 257, 279–80, 290 Nagel, Alexander 268 necromancers 54, 243, 256, 257, 260–66, 277–83, 289 appearance of 53, 264 deceived by devils 261, 261 n.23, 263, 291, 305, 321 defending from devils 261 mastering devils 53, 55, 261 ridiculed by devils 237 n.114 vs. witches 261, 265–66 necromancy 19, 23, 24, 235, 260–66 etymology of 260 as heresy 261 Newlands, Carole 218, 241 n.123 nightmares 19, 59–73, 60, 176, 255–56, 281, 306 n.131 Nixon, Mignon 132–33 Nomé, François de 270 novità 269, 306 n.133; see also invention nudity see body of witches: clothed/naked Odysseus see Circe; Circe Transforming Men into Beasts Omphale 51, 156 originality see invention osculum infame see Devil: anal kiss Ostrow, Steven 297 Ovid: on Apollo and Marsyas 237–38, 241–42 on Circe 45 n.10, 192 on Medea (Heroides) 218 n.76 on Medea (Medea) 227 on Medea (Metamorphoses) 115, 218, 219, 222, 226–27, 230, 235, 243 owls 26, 112, 113, 115, 133, 147, 149, 174, 200, 323; see also birds pacts with the Devil see Devil: pacts with Palazzo Ayrolo-Negrone, Genoa 237, 238, 239, 241 n.122 Palazzo della Ragione, Padua 163, 164 Palazzo del Te, Mantua 90, 92 Palazzo Farnese, Rome 194 n.12, 213 n.58, 214 n.60 Palazzo Fava, Bologna 227–29, 229, 232

Palazzo Pitti, Florence 118, 196 n.18 Palazzo Poggi, Bologna 206, 207, 213 n.55 Palazzo Salviati, Florence 192, 193 Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 193, 193, 204 n.39, 220, 221, 225 Paleotti, Gabriele 24 Pamphile 190 Paolini, Pietro 277 Roman Tavern 281 Witch Alarmed by a Devil 253–54, 256, 257 n.4, 260, 260 n.13, 262 n.24, 264, 266, 268 n.43, 277–78, 279, 280–81, 301–3 paragone 205, 269 Paré, Ambroise 63–64 Parmigianino: Adoration of the Shepherds 140, 141, 141 Circella 143 n.26, 210 n.48, 216 n.66 Entombment of Christ 140, 142 erotic works 141–46 fresco in Rocca Sanvitale 147 inspired by Dürer 151, 151 n.49 Lovers 143, 144 The Lower Part of Two Male Nudes 145, 146 Lucretia Preparing to Kill Herself 46 Mars and Venus with Vulcan 46 Martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul 56 mental health 176 Old Woman with a Distaff 21, 33, 45–59, 47, 48, 140–41, 155 Proserpina Turning Ascalaphus into an Owl 46 Two Lovers 142–43, 143 Witch Riding on a Phallus 21, 33, 131–78, 134, 135, 305, 323 A Young Spinner 56–57 Passe, Crispijn van de: Children of Saturn 195 n.14 Passeri, Giambattista 279 Passerotti, Bartolomeo 67 Patinir, Joachim 120 Paule, Maxwell 110 penises 92, 93, 143–46, 145, 171 of devils 165 devils disguised as 165–67, 305 euphemisms for 131–32, 146, 149, 152, 152 n.51, 159–60, 165 jokes on 131–32, 159–60 severed 82, 99, 132–33, 132, 150, 152, 158, 160, 176 n.22 stolen by witches 89, 158, 159–60, 167 terms for 131 n.2, 150 tongues compared to 61, 61 n.48 see also castration; impotence; phallus Percy, Ann 198 n.19 phallus 27, 33, 148, 148 n.39 apotropaic role of 150, 167–70, 168, 169 bestial 31, 133, 134, 135, 140, 165, 167–70, 168, 169 and the grotesque body 148 and humor 148–49, 152, 174–76 meanings of 149–50, 320, 321

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vs. penis 133, 137 n.10, 149–50, 158 psychoanalytic view of 132–33 as synecdoche for the male body 152 see also penises Phyllis 99, 151, 156 physiognomy 42, 61–62, 99, 110, 119, 140–41, 200–201, 281, 304 Picart, Bernard: Impostures innocentes 138–39 Witch Riding on a Phallus 133, 135, 138–40, 146 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco 107 Strix (Strega) 83, 84 n.10, 102, 160–61, 165, 190 Pino, Paolo 88 Piperno, Pietro 22 n.12 Plutarch 212, 242 n.125 on Evil Eye 170 Poliziano, Angelo 70, 107 Polyphemus 207, 208, 208 n.45, 213 Pomponazzi, Pietro 162 Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco 160 Popham, Arthur 136 n.7, 140 n.21 potions, magic 23, 82, 82, 83, 113, 114, 115, 190, 192–93, 193, 194, 201, 218, 219, 220, 222 n.82, 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 244, 262, 274, 275, 323 Pourbus, Pieter: The Last Supper 298, 299 Power of Women 31, 99 n.43, 156, 231; see also battle for the pants; Judith; Omphale; Phyllis Priapus 146, 150, 158 n.69, 167, 168, 174, 258–59 Prierias see Mazzolini, Silvestro da Prierio processions see Bacchus, processions of; Classical art; Stregozzo procuresses 70, 111 prostitutes 65 n.62, 70, 111, 112, 153–54, 163, 213–14 n.59 Pseudo-Caroselli see Caroselli, Pseudo Puglisi, Catherine 273 Quintilian 108, 227 n.95 Rabelais, François 262 n.27 Radcliffe, Ann 291–93 Raimondi, Marcantonio: Massacre of the Innocents 81, 94–95, 95, 107 Modi 90, 91, 99–100, 142–43, 143, 152, 153 Stregozzo 81, 82, 82; see also Stregozzo (Raimondi/Veneziano) Raphael 103, 107 copies after 56, 65, 66, 139 Fire in the Borgo 95–96, 96 frescoes in Sala di Costantino 93–94, 94 as Giulio Romano’s teacher 90, 93 The Massacre of the Innocents 94–95, 95 The Sacrifice of Pan 107 Stregozzo 82 n.4, 88 n.18, 93, 93 n.28 reanimation 190, 227, 228, 260–61, 262, 289 Reilly, Patricia 95–96 rejuvenation 219

in alchemy 226 as reanimation 227, 228, 242 see also Medea: rejuvenating Aeson; Medea Rejuvenating Aeson Rémy, Nicholas: on counter-magic 45 n.10 on devils’ appearances 303 on devils’ shapeshifting 304–5 Reni, Guido 41–42 reproductive prints 46, 48, 50, 57, 57 n.37, 133, 135, 138–39, 155 Ribera, Jusepe de: Apollo Flaying Marsyas (Brussels) 238–39, 241, 241 n.122 Apollo Flaying Marsyas (lost) 238 n.118 Apollo Flaying Marsyas (Naples) 238, 241 n.122 Stregozzo, painted version 88–89, 88 n.18, 89, 103, 274–75 visionary paintings 287 Ricci, Andrea 43 Rice, Louise 155–56 ride, witches’ 27, 33, 83, 157, 158, 191, 200, 204 n.38, 243 backwards 49, 55–56, 150–51 on brooms and poles 42, 52, 63 n.56, 88, 151, 152 n.51, 176, 177, 274 on goats 49, 55–56, 151, 156, 162 n.85, 195 n.14, 236 n.111, 274 licentious 52, 148, 149, 151, 157 on monsters 23, 42, 43, 118–19, 118 on phallus 131–78, 134 on skeletons 82, 82 n.2 Ripa, Cesare: Cruelty 263 n.29 Fear 275 n.62 Roper, Lyndal 42 n.6 Rosa, Salvator 20, 24 n.23, 27, 82 n.2, 88 n.18 compared to Medea 282 n.78 Night tondo 282 n.78 Philosophy and Poetry 321 Temptation of Saint Anthony 291 Witch and Soldier 33, 317–23, 318, 319 Rosa, Salvator, follower of: Witchcraft Scene 290, 291, 293 Rossetti, Marta 198 n.19, 263 n.29, 267, 269–70 Rubin, Patricia 90 n.24, 94 rumors and gossip 156, 156 n.64 Sabatini, Lorenzo: Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 222 n.82 sabbaths 114, 176, 178, 236 locations of 22, 303, 303 n.118 ride to 22, 23, 82, 89, 120, 133, 147, 147 n.37, 151, 200, 274–75 rites in 22, 52–53, 88, 89, 98, 113, 157, 274–75 terms for 22, 120 Sagana 258–59 Salomon, Bernard: Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 227, 227 n.94, 228, 230, 233

373

Index 

Salomon, Nanette 229 n.99 Samarini, Francesco 243 Sandrart, Joachim von 268 n.43 on Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard 273 n.55 on Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew 289 n.86 on Van Laer 281 Satan see Devil satirical mode 66–67, 69–70, 71, 103, 137, 148, 150, 155–56, 158, 167, 170, 174, 175, 205, 212, 215, 235, 258, 269, 273, 282, 283, 306, 323; see also caricatures; humor; jokes Saturn 164 Capricornian goat of 162 n.85, 195 n.14 castrated 158 n.69 and his Children 163, 163, 195 n.14 and Medea 222, 229, 230, 230–31 n.101 and melancholy 162, 164, 198 n.19 and prostitution 163, 164 and witchcraft 162, 195 n.14 Scaglia, Desiderio 267 scatological imagery 233, 234, 235–37 Schedel, Hartmann: Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 191 n.9 Schongauer, Martin: The Temptation of Saint Anthony 119 Scot, Reginald: on devils’ corporeality 297 n.27 on incubus disease 64 on witches’ appearance 42 on witches’ delusions 199 n.22 on witches overturning the world 236–37 Scultori, Giovanni Battista: Judith and Holofernes 231, 231 Segal, Charles 226–27, 227 n.92 self-portraits: Bernini 281, 281 n.70 Caravaggio 281 Rembrandt 281, 281 n.70 Van Laer 278, 279, 281–82 serio ludere 137, 137 n.12 sexual intercourse 19, 90, 91, 143–46, 144, 169, 169, 223 with devils 22, 137, 165, 166, 174 n.112 euphemisms and metaphors for 146, 149 fornications 137, 137 n.11, 157, 163 impediment of 158–59 with incubi 25, 62–63, 157, 162, 165 n.90, 298 lusting for 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67 with women on top 99–100, 134, 142–43, 143, 149, 152–54, 152 n.53, 153, 163, 164, 165 n.90, 168, 214, 214 see also masturbation; sodomy Sgarbi, Vittorio 196 n.18, 269, 270 Sibyl, Cumaean 121 n.114, 321–23, 322 sibyls: melancholy of 203 n.36 vs. witches 322–23 Sickel, Lothar 59–61, 70

Simaetha 190 Simon Magus 261 Simons, Patricia 20, 131–32, 149 n.42, 158, 217 n.69 sinistrality see left-handedness skulls 42 n.7, 260, 276, 276, 300 hybrids comprising 82, 99, 105, 115, 117, 117, 121 n.114 signaling brutality 114, 115, 133, 134, 147 used in cephalomancy 19, 23, 235, 254, 255, 256, 257, 262–63, 281, 289 used for invoking the dead 262 n.26 used for magic 233, 234, 291, 292 as vanitas motif 203, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 242, 287, 289 Sloth 51, 154, 162–63 slung leg motif 214, 214 n.60, 214 sodomy 100, 100 n.45, 137 n.11 Solimena, Francesco: Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 195, 198 n.19 Solis, Virgil: Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 205 n.41 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 227 n.94 Spada, Leonello: Witch Pursuing after a Young Man 59–73 spells see incantations and spells Spina, Bartolommeo 22 n.12, 160, 199 n.26 spindles 46, 50 n.18, 51, 155 as euphemism for penis 149, 152 n.51, 159 as horns 133, 134, 154, 155–56, 157, 158 see also distaff; spinning spinning 21, 32, 45, 47, 48, 50–52, 56–57, 155 virtues associated with 50–51, 50 n.17 see also distaff; spindles Spranger, Bartholomeus 20 n.7, 24 n.23 Sprenger, Jacobus 102 n.47, 159 n.74; see also Malleus maleficarum; Kramer, Heinrich Stephens, Walter 25, 109 n.82, 161 n.80, 167 n.95, 200, 298 n.113, 305, 305 n.130 stigma diabolicum 41, 305 Stradano, Giovanni: The Alchemist’s Laboratory 224–26 Ulysses and Circe (Sala di Penelope) 193, 193–94 Ulysses and Circe (studiolo) 194 n.12 strega 19–20, 24 n.23, 25, 26, 42 n.5, 111, 118, 119, 147, 171, 323–24, 324; see also Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco: Strix (Strega) Strega (liqueur), label of 323–24, 324 stregone see witches: male Stregozzo (Raimondi/Veneziano) 81–121, 82 artistic references in 93–97, 99, 106–7 attribution 82, 82 n.4, 90–93 copies of 82, 88–89, 88 n.19, 89, 274–75 iconography 83–84 title of 83, 83 n.6 striae 22, 26, 64, 64 n.60 strix 26, 26 n.30, 110, 112, 147; see also Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco: Strix (Strega) Strozzi, Bernardo: Calling of St. Matthew 284–85, 286, 287

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succubus 62 Suida Manning, Bertina 190, 201, 242 n.124 Sullivan, Margaret 26 n.31, 42 n.7, 158 n.69 Swan, Claudia 28, 29 n.41, 31, 42, 56, 216 Swanenburg, Willem van: The Devil as Painter 282 Swanenburgh, Jacob van 20, 121 Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld 121 n.114 trial of 24, 24 n.22, 30 Symonds, John Addington 25 Tafuri, Manfredo 103 talismans see amulets Talvacchia, Bette 137 n.10, 152 n.54 Tassi, Agostino: Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft 274, 275 Tasso, Torquato: Gerusalemme liberata 196 n.17, 243, 260 Tempesta, Antonio: Circe Changing Picus into a Bird 65, 67 Circe Transforming Ulysses’s Men into Swine 65 n.62, 205, 206 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 227 n.94, 233 n.105 terror see horror: vs. terror Tertullian 260 n.14 Testa, Pietro 24 n.23 theater 305 n.130 devils in 259, 259 n.10, 266 magicians and witches in 266 Thiry, Léonard: Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 220, 222 Thomassin, Philippe 66 n.64 Tibaldi, Pellegrino 33, 222 n.82 Blinding of Polyphemus 207, 208, 213 Circe and Ulysses 20, 205–13, 207, 210, 217, 217 n.70 Titian: Bacchus and Ariadne 106 n.69 Saint Margaret and the Dragon 275–76, 276 tongues 59 compared to penises 61, 61–62 n.48 and the grotesque body 62, 112, 119, 212–13 signaling cannibalism 113 signaling incantations 113 Tournier, Nicolas: Group of Revellers 285, 286, 291 transformations: coalescing with hybrids 205–17 credibility of 191, 199 n.26 of devils 165, 167, 303–5 of men into beasts 23, 33, 109, 109 n.82, 116, 190, 191 of natural substances into invaluable products 224 problems in depicting 44–45, 167, 200, 205 rejuvenations as 219–20 skepticism toward 191, 199–200, 204, 244 of witches/women into birds 26, 190 see also Circe; Circe Transforming Men into Beasts; werewolves Turner, James Grantham 100 n.44, 136

Ulysses see Circe; Circe Transforming Men into Beasts upside-down world 30 n.46, 51, 52–53, 98, 100–101, 103, 109, 109 n.83, 116, 121, 136–37, 150–51, 175, 217, 237, 243, 321; see also inversion urination 216–17 Van Dyck, Anthony: Una striga in Palermo 23 n.16 vanitas 201, 235, 242, 242 n.124, 289, 289 n.88 Van Laer, Pieter: and Bamboccianti 279 misshapen body of 281, 281 n.74 Witch Alarmed by a Devil 253–54, 255, 257, 259, 262 n.24, 264–65, 278–83, 290, 291, 301–3 witchcraft painting for Felice Zacchia 289 n.89 Vasari, Giorgio 208 n.46, 220 on Leonardo 105 n.61, 119, 216 on Parmigianino 176 on Raphael 107 on Schongauer 119 on Vico 45 n.12 Vassallo, Anton Maria 33 Circe Transforming Men into Beasts 196 n.17, 234 Medea Rejuvenating Aeson 233–37, 233, 242, 243, 323 Vecchia, Pietro della 24 n.23 Veneziano, Agostino: Bacchanal 139 Stregozzo 82, 82; see also Stregozzo (Raimondi/ Veneziano) Venus and Cupid 139 Vesalius, Andreas: Apollo Flaying Marsyas 243 n.127 Vico, Enea: Academy of Bandinelli 84 n.12 Lucretia Preparing to Kill Herself 46 Mars and Venus with Vulcan 46 Old Woman with a Distaff 21, 32, 45–59, 48, 155 Proserpina Turning Ascalaphus into an Owl 46 Two Old Women near an Altar 298 n.114 victims, male 31, 99, 156–60, 244 see also castration; Circe; cuckoldry; impotence; Medea; Parmigianino: Witch Riding on a Phallus; penises: stolen by witches; Rosa, Salvator: Witch and Soldier; Spada, Leonello: Witch Pursuing after a Young Man Virgilio, Giovanni del 191 Visconti, Girolamo 162, 190 n.4 Visconti, Zaccaria 199 visionary paintings 287, 297 n.111, 299 n.116 voice, witches’ 111, 113, 115, 116 Vos, Maerten de: Children of Saturn 195 n.14 Cruelty 263 n.29 Walker Bynum, Carolyn 210 wands 45 n.10, 152, 152 n.51, 192, 194, 220, 264, 282 nn.77–78

375

Index 

Webb, Peter 133, 176 werewolves 109 n.82, 115, 167 n.95 White, Veronica 71 Wier, Johan 198 Wijck, Thomas: The Alchemist and Death 291, 292, 293 Wild Man 157 n.65 William of Auvergne 64 n.60 Witch Alarmed by a Devil 253–307 Caroselli 253, 255, 260, 260 nn.12–13, 263, 266, 268, 269–70, 273–77, 290, 298 Paolini 253–54, 256, 257 n.4, 260, 260 n.13, 262 n.24, 264, 266, 268 n.43, 277–78, 279, 280–81, 301–3 Pseudo-Caroselli 253, 254, 268, 269–73, 283, 290 Van Laer 253–54, 255, 257, 259, 262 n.24, 264–65, 278–83, 290, 291, 301–3 witchcraft: early modern conception 21–23, 25, 52–53, 83, 85, 98, 148–49, 190, 323 vs. magic and sorcery 22 n.9 vs. necromancy 261, 265–66 as perversion of Christianity 22, 53, 102, 103, 106–7 n.69, 261, 263–64, 305, 322 skepticism towards 29–30, 102–3, 148, 160–67, 176, 191, 198–200, 295, 297 n.110, 323 witches: appearance see body of witches images see images of witches Italian vs. German 25, 25 n.28 male 23–24, 24 n.20, 27, 99, 100 n.45, 264, 265, 265–66 social status 51–52, 147 see also witches in Classical literature; witches, Italian locations of; women, old; and specific topics witches in Classical literature 20, 26 n.31, 83, 98, 191, 236, 323 and early modern witchcraft 22, 25–26, 26 n.31, 83, 112, 115, 190 Greek vs. Roman 189 n.2 see also Apollonius Rhodius; Canidia; Circe; Diana; Erichtho; Folia; Hecate; Homer; Horace; Lucan; Medea; Meroe; Ovid; Pamphile; Sagana; Simaetha witches, Italian locations of: Alpine territories 23 Benevento 22, 22 n.12, 323, 324 Brescia 22 n.15 Emilia-Romagna 23, 24 Lombardy 23, 83 n.6, 262 Milan 22 n.15 Mirandola 83, 102, 160–61 Modena 22 n.13, 147 n.37 Naples 23 n.18, 24 n.20

Palermo 23 n.16 Perugia 22 n.15, 25, 25 n.28 Po River valley 23 Rome 267 Venice 24 n.20 witches’ sabbaths see sabbaths witches, terms for see incantatrici; lamia; maga; maliosa; maschare/mascae; strega; striae; strix; zobianae witch of Endor 107 n.69, 260–61 Witch Riding on a Phallus (Parmigianino) 21, 33, 131–78, 134, 135, 305, 323 attribution 133, 140–46 compared with Goya’s Caprichos 176, 177, 178 dating 133, 140 two printed versions 133–36, 138–40 see also humor; penises; phallus witch trials and executions 23–24, 83–84, 84 n.9, 102, 137, 147 n.37, 160–61, 267 witnesses see bystanders Wölfflin, Heinrich 283, 289 Wolk-Simon, Linda 91 women: compared to animals and monsters 110–11, 118 disorderly 51 domestic vocation of 50–51 predisposed to practice witchcraft 26, 98, 190 n.3, 267 see also specific topics women, old 41–73 called strega 42 n.5 called vetulae 42, 63 n.56 considered as witches 22, 27, 41–43, 43, 49, 51–52, 52 n.23, 60, 71, 71, 82, 83, 134, 140–41, 147, 323, 324 grotesque representations of 66–67 in Hellenistic sculpture 42 n.7 as housewives 45–46, 47 as incubi 63 n.56, 63–64 lust of 60, 66–70, 69, 111, 147–48 and rejuvenation 226 vs. young women 24, 24 n.20, 111, 171 n.105 Wood, Christopher 268 Xanto Avelli, Francesco: Astolfo in the Kingsom of Women 99–100 n.44 Death of the Woman of Sestos 99–100 n.44 Zennaro, Tiziana 238 n.119, 239, 242 Zeuxis 108 Zika, Charles 27, 28, 89, 136, 157, 158 n.69, 190, 191, 191 n.9 Zissos, Andrew 219 zobianae 64 Zoroaster 261, 282 n.78 Zucker, Mark 299