Witches Don’t Whisper, They Print: Fear as a Reproducible Object

#31DaysofHalloween

Between the late fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, European artists forged a pictorial language for witchcraft and necromancy that was as technical as it was theological. Techniques of line and light, hatch, cross-hatch, and acid bite in intaglio; candle, moon, and brazier in oil, do more than describe; they adjudicate. In Renaissance prints, reproducible matrices (copperplates and blocks) convert rumor into portable image; a distributed “ink-night” manufactures consensus about the witch as sexual, aerial, and conspiratorial threat (Metropolitan Museum of Art; RISD Museum; British Museum). In Baroque paintings of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28), staged luminosity; choreographed spotlights, occluding shadows, renders prophecy as spectacle and judgment, recoding visibility itself as a theological weapon (Rijksmuseum; Museum Bredius; Louvre Museum). The stakes are gendered. The anonymous, mass-circulated witch becomes the aggregate face of panic, while Endor’s individuated seer, often aged, widowed, or veiled, emerges as a doctrinal problem and a dramatic protagonist.

The Temptation of St Anthony, engraving by Martin Schongauer, c. 1470–75

The Four Naked Women, or The Four Witches, or The Four Sorceresses or Scene in a Brothel, are titles given to a 1497 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.

The Witches (formerly titled The Witches' Sabbath) is a chiaroscuro woodcut by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung. This woodcut depicts witches preparing to travel to a Witches' Sabbath by using flying ointment. This is the first woodcut produced by Baldung after leaving the studio of his mentor, Albrecht Dürer, and one of the first Renaissance images to depict both witches that fly and a Witches' Sabbath.

Ulrich Molitor (also Molitoris) (c. 1442 – before 23 December 1507) was a lawyer who wrote a treatise offering qualified support, joined to clarifications and methodological critiques derived Canon Law, to the recent witch-phobic efforts by Heinrich Kramer represented in Krämer's then-recently-published manual for the interrogation and prosecution of witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum.

From their first modern appearances, European witches were drawn into being by lines. Engraving and woodcut, media “composed entirely of lines”, turn density into atmosphere and atmosphere into accusation. In Martin Schongauer’s Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons (c. 1470–74), the saint’s body levitates into a swarming field of hybrid attackers; the air is a lattice of burred strokes and tightly cross-hatched eddies, an early proof that engraved line can thicken into weather, even into will (Metropolitan Museum of Art). A generation later, Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Witches (1497) concentrates panic into a chamber scene; four nudes, a polished intaglio surface, micro-densities of hatch that calibrate moral legibility, skin as evidence, against a receding gloom (RISD Museum; British Museum). With Hans Baldung Grien, witchcraft steps into the open and the nocturne becomes meteorological. His chiaroscuro woodcut The Witches (1510) stacks key and tone blocks to conjure a sulfurous dusk alive with bone, smoke, and skin; darkness as medium, not backdrop (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Technique intersects debate; Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus (1489) disseminates skeptical Latin prose alongside woodcuts whose black-white binaries harden rumor into form, a paradox that explains why Baldung’s witches could feel both new and already legible (Molitor). Pamphlets such as Newes from Scotland (1591) then literalize reproducible fear, condensing narrative into high-contrast emblems reimposed across editions (University of Glasgow Library; Crabb).

Compendium Maleficarum is a witch-hunter's manual written in Latin by Francesco Maria Guazzo, and published in Milan (present-day Italy) in 1608. Compendium maleficarum, collected in 3 books from many sources, showing the iniquitous and execrable operations of witches against the human race, and the divine remedies by which they may be frustrated. It discusses witches' pacts with the devil, and detailed descriptions of witches’ powers and poisons. It also contains Guazzo's classification of demons, based on a previous work by Michael Psellus.

Witchcraft takes to the air at the precise moment print acquires a taste for velocity. In Baldung’s chiaroscuro sheets, the sky is not background but instrument. Parallel cuts drive the eye along broom shafts and goat backs; tone blocks lay a dusk that seems to carry figures rather than merely surround them (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). Molitor concedes spectacle while naming much of it illusiones diaboli; a skepticism the accompanying woodcuts quietly overrule by repeating the sightlines of ascent (Molitor). Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium maleficarum (1608) inventories brooms, goats, powders, and contracts with the bureaucratic calm of a ledger (Guazzo, Compendium, 1608; Guazzo, trans. Summers, 1929). Pamphleteers translate the set into headline iconography; the woodcut in Newes from Scotland standardizes the night (University of Glasgow Library; Crabb).

Newes from Scotland is the earliest tract on Scottish witchcraft. It claims to give a true account of a famous trial of alleged witches in North Berwick which had far reaching effects due to the fact that King James VI himself played a prominent part in it, giving credence to the existence of witchcraft and setting the standard for later trials.

Witches Preparing for Sabbath, 1610 Attributed to Andries Stock (Netherlandish, 1572/82-after 1648) after Jacques de Gheyn II (Dutch, 1565–1629)

Daemonologie, in full Dæmonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mightie Prince, James &c., was first published in 1597 by James VI and I as a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient black magic. It was reprinted again in 1603 when James took the throne of England. The widespread consensus is that King James wrote Daemonologie in response to sceptical publications such as Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Frontispiece to Daemonologie by James VI (1597 edition); Suspected witches kneeling before King James, Daemonologie (1597)

Animals enter the frame as conclusions. The cat at the cauldron, the owl on the bough, the goat under the rider, the toad among the phials do not decorate; they decide. Demonological discourse names familiar spirits, creatures suckling at hidden marks or serving as demonic proxies, while image culture condenses the claim into silhouette code (James VI). Baldung binds horn, hair, and thigh until species trespass becomes visible crime (Metropolitan Museum of Art). The precedent lies in Schongauer’s hybrid demonology, where hatch makes moral force animal (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Guazzo closes the circuit. Text lists become woodcut creatures; once repeatable, they are provable to a print-trained eye (Guazzo). Broadsides routinize the inference; image as pre-trial evidence (Crabb; University of Glasgow Library).

The workshop of malefice is a kitchen, not because domesticity softens the charge, but because print can itemize it. Mortar, pestle, ladle, kettle: in Baldung’s sheets they detach from provisioning and click into a chain of operations (grinding, boiling, fumigating) rendered with empirical relish (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Metropolitan Museum of Art). Demonology supplies recipe logic (unguents for flight, smokes for harm) that the block and plate stage with procedural clarity (Molitor; Guazzo). Pamphlet illustration re-homes the lab on the page; counters crowded with jars and fetishes read like inventories of intent (University of Glasgow Library). A crescent moon, top-light preserved as paper reserve, turns spoons and phials into contraband; chiaroscuro adds a mid-tone that makes the cauldron’s lip gleam like evidence (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

If Renaissance virtuosi taught line to seethe, the pamphleteer taught it to circulate. The witch image joins the street as a broadside; cheap paper, hard contrast, captions that steer the eye, and fear acquires a distribution network. Newes from Scotland (1591) is exemplary. A single woodcut condenses torture, confession, and sabbath into a repeatable emblem, its blacks locking the scene to memory like a seal (University of Glasgow Library; Crabb). Because broadsides are serial, they do doctrinal work by accumulation; a goat here, a broom there, a cauldron everywhere, until the composite viewer carries a ready-made template to every rumor. Impressions multiply faster than correction; once an image is cheap enough to pin to a tavern beam, it becomes part of a town’s attention soundtrack (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Newes from Scotland).

Print, a monochrome art, nonetheless cuts light like a blade. In the witch corpus, illumination is a technique of incision; torch, moon, brazier are names for edge-making devices. Schongauer carves clarity from storm; glare as therapy for confusion (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Dürer perfects the surgical register; hairline hatch grades flesh so pallor reads as evidence (RISD Museum). Baldung systematizes the clinic with chiaroscuro, key block as incision; tone block as bruise (Metropolitan Museum of Art). In broadsides, the grammar hardens to binary glare, a torch that convicts by contrast, a moon that exposes by outline (University of Glasgow Library; Crabb). Painting will amplify this scalpel on oil’s deep body.

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Saul and the Witch of Endor, 1526. To the left, inside a magic circle, the witch, sitting on a throne of owls, practices her witchcraft. A sater is holding a book with magic spells. To the right four women an two goats are tasting their brewage. To their right a devil with a hurdy-gurdy is standing. Witches and devils are flying through the air. To the left King Saul is standing before the witch's house. In the background the ruins of an arch is depicted through which the Prophet Samuel and Saul's suicide can be seen.

Salvator Rosa, The shadow of Samuel appearing to Saul at the house of the pythoness of Endor, 1668

With Endor, witchcraft leaves rumor for Scripture and the picture becomes a liturgy with props. Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen’s Saul and the Witch of Endor (1526, Rijksmuseum) builds the séance like an altar: canopy textile, brazier light, stage-deep recession promising revelation at center; where the apparition will appear (Rijksmuseum). The diviner operates as master of ceremonies as much as transgressor; sacral grammar bent to banned use. Salvator Rosa enlarges the theater (brazier flare, crowding soldiers, a prophet erupting from a cone of glare) so that prophecy reads as forbidden mass, performed under emergency lighting (Louvre Museum).

Rembrandt, Saul with his servants at the fortune-teller of Endor. Dated c. 1657 by Benesch, who mentions a copy at Brunswick. Although identified as Saul by the Witch of Endor’ in cat. Kleykamp 1915 and subsequently always since Knuttel 1926, yet probably also the sheet identified by Van Gelder 1922 as: “Rembrandt, Corps de Garde”. Pictured is an episode from 1. Samuel 28. Saul as general of the field is afraid of the army of the Philistines. He then allows himself to appoint a woman at Endor “who has a fortune-telling spirit”. Other depictions of this story always depict the spectacular episode in which the fortune-teller has the already deceased Samuel appear, predicting to Saul nothing but misfortune. Rembrandt depicted the more domestic sequel. The woman offers the company food, which Saul accepts only after much objection: ‘and she took flour, and kneaded it, and baked unleavened cakes of it. And she brought them before Saul and his servants, and they ate’ (1 Samuel 28:24-25).

The apparition is a test of medium. Oostsanen opts for a solid prophet whose chalky pallor reads like a paper-reserve translated to oil; an embodied efficacy that heightens the rite’s danger (Rijksmuseum). Rembrandt, by contrast, often dissolves the revenant in drawing; suspended whiteness behaving like lifted ground, light, not flesh, steering the miracle toward perceptual uncertainty (Museum Bredius; Benesch). Rosa chooses the statuesque; marble pallor carved by flame, a tomb effigy reanimated by brazier-light (Louvre Museum).

Endor is a state portrait upside down. The king who cannot hear God hires a woman to mediate; sovereignty outsourced in the dead of night. Oostsanen tilts geometry to admit dependency (Rijksmuseum). Rembrandt condenses crisis; servants huddle in light they fear to need; Saul sags as the apparition blooms (Museum Bredius; Benesch). Rosa expands dread into campaign optics (helmets, spears, a field court convened by flame) political impotence rendered as logistics gone occult (Louvre Museum).

Endor is a school in hierarchies of light. Candle isolates faces and hands; witness and utterance. Moon registers as cosmic surveillance. Brazier forges accusatory under-lighting; jaw, sockets, shroud carved from below as if the ground testifies. Oostsanen stacks sources; Rembrandt lets paper reserve serve as local annunciation; Rosa enthrones the brazier so judgment feels combustive (Rijksmuseum; Museum Bredius; Louvre Museum).

Age and dress are doctrinal levers. Oostsanen’s kerchiefed mantle reads as widow-poverty or pious habit, suspending the verdict (Rijksmuseum). Rembrandt ages the seer (creased cheek, knotted hands) so experience looks like weaponized marginal labor (Museum Bredius; Benesch). Rosa grants theatrical authority; closer to sibyl than scold (Louvre Museum). Cloth becomes a theology of agency in wool and linen.

Sightlines conscript the viewer. Oostsanen triangulates Saul ➡️ witch ➡️ apparition ➡️ us (Rijksmuseum). Rembrandt seats us at servant height, peering past shoulders and pikes (Museum Bredius). Rosa stages the glare to spill into our space; the brazier’s heat touches ours (Louvre Museum). Drawing lessons in directing attention become a morality of looking.

Without sound, painters score speech through hands and mouths. Saul’s open palm asks; the witch’s index commands; Samuel’s parted lips register oracle. Rembrandt makes a sliver of white read as breath; Rosa lets flame provide the audible crackle (Museum Bredius; Louvre Museum). Oostsanen arrays mouths along a diagonal (question, invocation, response) turning the canvas into a score for forbidden liturgy (Rijksmuseum).

Confessional cultures tune optics. In the Dutch/Rembrandtian orbit, suspicion sits beside taste for ambiguity; hovering apparitions, withholding light (Museum Bredius; Benesch). In Italian Baroque hands, Rosa, Endor is spectacle. Tenebrism declares verdicts; prophecy materializes like marble; the witch risks elevation into tragic antagonist (Louvre Museum). Oostsanen, early, Netherlandish Catholic, splits the difference, borrowing witch-print props while choreographing an ordered stage (Rijksmuseum). Print’s portable panic feeds Protestant suspicion; oil’s theater feeds Catholic exhortation.

Panic versus exegesis defines the medium’s moral temperature. Prints accumulate fear by iteration; they multiply panic through the economy of repetition; each impression a new contagion of suspicion. Paintings, by contrast, stage interpretation through illumination, transforming dread into inquiry (Molitor; Guazzo; Newes from Scotland; Rijksmuseum; Museum Bredius; Louvre Museum).

Gendered night sustains the contrast. The anonymous witch of print is a type engineered by matrices (repeatable, anonymous, deniable) while Endor’s seer is a character argued by light and cloth. In her case, individuation is theological; illumination becomes proof of divine allowance, drapery the index of mediation rather than disguise.

Light itself operates as a theological weapon. Etched ink-night manufactures suspicion, each line darkening the moral register, while Baroque glare pronounces judgment; light behaving like revelation, the beam as verdict.

The transition from market to court completes the circuit. Street papers cool panic into policy, supplying the visual evidence that underwrites edict and trial; palace canvases warm doctrine into drama, converting orthodoxy into spectacle for the confessional elite.

Benjamin West, Saul and the Witch of Endor, 1777

William Sidney Mount, Saul and the Witch of Endor, 1828

Afterlives follow the same law of translation. Read forward, the Endor cycle seeds a longer reception history. Benjamin West trims Baroque menace into moral tableau; in his 1777 Saul and the Witch of Endor (Wadsworth Atheneum), Samuel’s cool apparition and Saul’s prone body translate Rosa’s brazier-drama into neoclassical pedagogy, adjudicating by clarity rather than heat (West). Across the Atlantic, William Sidney Mount’s 1828 canvas (Smithsonian American Art Museum) re-domesticates the rite for a new republic; the prophet’s whitened shroud acts like a stage-lantern, American daylight turned supernatural, while Saul’s troop ingests the scene as popular theater (Mount). Whether reproducible panic (print), palatial exegesis (oil), or didactic heritage (academy and museum), technique keeps doing theology with light.

Across a century and a half, European artists developed two linked technologies for visualizing illicit power. Print trained publics to read a codex of night; hatch as weather, silhouettes as warrants, animals and utensils as jurisprudence. Painting adapted print’s scalpel to oil’s body, building forbidden liturgies in which light sorted souls and staged speech. In the witch sheets of Schongauer, Dürer, and Baldung, darkness becomes a portable system, reproduced until it feels natural. In the Endor canvases and drawings of Oostsanen, Rembrandt, and Rosa, darkness becomes a court, where prophecy is admitted under theatrical light and the politics of sight decide what counts as revelation. Technique is not an accessory but the argument; line and light are theologies with procedures and courts of appeal. Read together, the Renaissance witch and the Baroque necromancy of Endor sketch two haunted models of female agency, anonymous menace and singular medium, whose futures still flicker wherever images legislate what we fear, and how.

References:

Baldung Grien, Hans. The Witches. 1510. Chiaroscuro woodcut. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336235.

The Witches (first state). 1510. Woodcut. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/416796.

Witches’ Sabbath. 1510. Chiaroscuro woodcut. The Metropolitan Museum of Art—Perspectives.

https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/drawings-and-prints-work-of-the-week-july.

Benesch, Otto. The Drawings of Rembrandt: A Critical and Chronological Catalogue. Rev. ed., Phaidon, 1973.

Bruegel the Elder, Pieter. Dulle Griet (Mad Meg). 1563. Oil on panel. Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp.

(Collection entry).

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https://www.publicdomainreview.org/essay/woodcuts-and-witches.

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https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/collection/four-witches-49127.

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The Four Witches (reverse copy after Dürer). c. 1500. Engraving. The British Museum, London (E,1.19).

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