Stregoneria

During the 1640s in Florence and the 1650s in Rome, Salvator Rosa produced a group of works depicting macabre scenes of witchcraft which would have appealed to learned collectors who appreciated the bizarre and outlandish, filling their cabinets with both natural and artistic curiosities. At the time, the practice of witchcraft was still believed to be a reality, and while other Italian artists painted the beautiful sorceresses of classical literature, Rosa’s paintings depict grotesque witches performing obscene acts, for example, worshipping the devil at their sabbaths, practicing divination and necromancy, and casting spells. Upon settling in Florence in 1640, Rosa developed an avid interest in the supernatural and became part of a group of intellectuals, actors, scientists, and artists similarly fascinated by the occult. While Rosa would have known the manuals produced by Renaissance demonologists which detailed the purported activities of witches, prints by German artists like Hans Baldung Grien and Albrecht Dürer, the demonic images of Jacques Callot, then working in Florence, and contemporary anatomical illustrations offered the artist a wealth of visual source material. Rosa’s initial interest in witchcraft, however, may have begun over a decade before his arrival in Florence. His earliest patron during his Neapolitan period, Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio, a learned proponent of science and reason, championed the Church’s fight against witchcraft. While collectors may have appreciated Rosa’s witchcraft scenes for their eccentricity, a deep suspicion of superstition and sorcery underpinned these images. Thus, Rosa approached his witchcraft scenes as though depicting events that, at least in the collective imagination, might actually have been taking place in the secret recesses of Tuscany’s woods and mountains, rendering them with his characteristically horrid but caricaturized naturalism.