1650
oil
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
A Witches' Sabbath is a 1650 oil by Cornelis Saftleven, a Baroque work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a chaotic scene with a witch on a goat and many devils. The witch is chasing the devils away with a broomstick. This painting shows how artists combined fantasy with real-world details, like the moth wings and a frog's body. Check out the technique of chiaroscuro to learn more about how artists use light and dark to create depth in paintings like this one.
A witch riding a goat and brandishing a broomstick charges out from the left edge of this scene to chase away dozens of devils. Such ghoulish subjects had long been appreciated in Northern Europe for the way they combined a sense of wild, supernatural threat with scientific observation of the natural world—seen here in the detailed moth wings of the howling figure on the right and the deft rendering of the frog’s splayed body. Cornelis Saftleven responded to Dutch buyers’ evolving taste by treating his fantastic subjects with fine brushstrokes and a limited color palette.
Possibly Maximin Maurel, Paris; possibly sold by him October 4, 1865, as La Sorcière de Sabbat [see H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des ventes d’art, vol. 6 (Paris, 1911), p. 405]. Probably Baron Karl Kuffner de Dioszegh, Castle Dioszegh, Dioszegh, Czechoslovakia; his son Baron Raoul Kuffner de Dioszegh (died 1961) and the Baroness Dioszegh (Tamara de Lempicka, died 1980), presumably removed from Castle Dioszegh between 1930 and 1938 when it was among a group of objects placed at Christie’s, London, from June/July 1938 to May 1939 and marked with the number 804GS, still visible on the back of the…
New York, American British Art Center, Other Worlds, October 1945, cat. 30, traveled to Andover, Mass., Addison Gallery, Phillips Academy, November 1945.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Cornelis Saftleven (c. 1607 in Gorinchem – 1 June 1681 in Rotterdam) was a Dutch painter who worked in a great variety of genres. Known in particular for his rural genre scenes, his range of subjects was very wide and…
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