Exhibition ‘Witches’ at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Riding with the Devil

Viv Lawes discovers the dark allure of the first major British exhibition on witchcraft

E
YES wild with malevo-
lence, every tendon in her
emaciated body straining
in the raking firelight of the night
sky, Invidia, hair full of serpents,
eats her own heart out. Envy is an
old woman, a hideous hag whose
breasts, no longer capable of giving
succour to an infant, are objects
of revulsion. These symbols of
femininity, no longer useful, have
become symbols of evil.
These are the thoughts that
sprang to mind when artist and
writer Deanna Petherbridge, guest
curator of this groundbreaking
exhibition, saw Jacques de Gheyn’s
1596 print Invidia more than
a decade ago. She was, at the time,
researching her 2010 publication,
The Primacy of Drawing. ‘I kept
realising that, every time I came
across these hideous depictions
of old women as the personifi-
cation of Envy, they were incredibly
similar to the representation of
witches, who are motivated by
envy. Their bodies are marked:
written upon them is the notion
that ugliness is evil. Medieval texts
are full of statements that clearly
say that, once the female body is
no longer fertile, it becomes foul.’
Miss Petherbridge’s obser-
vation grew into a chapter for
her book and now this major
survey of the depiction of witches
and witchcraft—the first of its
kind at a major British institution.
The exhibition spans 500 years
of western art, beginning in the
late 15th century with Dürer and
ending with contemporary artists
such as Paula Rego and Kiki Smith,
the imagery of successive centuries
traced through Francisco de Goya,
William Blake and John William
Waterhouse. It is divided thematic-
ally to include witches’ various
incarnations, their supposed prac-
tices and the theatrical tradition
that has grown up around them.
Thus we see the old hag juxta-
posed with the seductive sorceress;
the Sabbaths and devilish rituals;
unnatural acts of flying; magic
circles, spells and the raising of The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, 1886—magic is a common theme in the artist’s work

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Invidia (Envy), engraving by Z Dolendo after Jacques de Gheyn II
corpses; and unholy trinities and
the sisterly witches of Macbeth.
We also see their representation
by modern and contemporary art-
ists, which has resonance in an
increasingly secular West, where
adherents of the Wicca movement
tenaciously promote witchcraft
as a form of nature worship.
The majority of the 86 works on
show are prints and drawings, with
Unholy trinities: The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (formerly called
The Triple Hecate) by William Blake, about 1795
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The dominance of prints and
drawings shows the way in which
the notion of witchcraft and the
widespread belief in its existence
was connected to the development
of printing, says Miss Pether-
bridge. Malleus Maleficarum—
the 1486 publication that became
the handbook for the persecution
of witches, resulting in the deaths
of up to nine million people,
mainly women, over 250 years—
owed its fame to the printing press.
Likewise, engravings and wood-
cuts on the subject were widely
circulated from an early date: the
survival of multiple versions of
Dürer’s Witch Riding Backwards
on a Goat, 1500, and Hans Bal-
dung Grien’s Witches’ Sabbath,
1510—a chiaroscuro double-block
woodcut print that looks like
a highly polished carved relief—
are testament to their popularity.
A century later, at the peak of
the witch trials in Europe, another
of Jacques de Gheyn’s prints, Prep-
aration for a Witches’ Sabbath,
1610, was so widely circulated
that it influenced books and the
broadsheets that were printed
every time a trial took place.
a handful of paintings loaned from
British institutional and private
collections. Monochrome graphic
imagery sweeps through the gal-
lery; this is interrupted occasion-
ally by splashes of colour that
emerge in works such as Salvator
Rosa’s masterpiece Witches at
their Incantations, 1646, and
Frederick Sandys’s sumptuous pre-
Raphaelite Medea, 1866–68.
Woman Bewitched by the Moon No. 2 [Opus 0.175], Alan Davie, 1956
The imagery and textual sources
supported the social, political
and religious complexities that
breathed life into the persecution
of anyone who didn’t fit the sup-
posed norms or engendered fear:
old women, supernaturally beauti-
ful women, midwives, Jews, poets,
gypsies. ‘The strangest thing is
that the imagery of witchcraft
from one end of Europe to
another was disquietingly simi-
lar—the presence of fire, flying
backwards, unnatural sexual acts.
Everything was an inversion of
Christian iconography,’ says Miss
Petherbridge. ‘Imagery and lan-
guage was borrowed, reproducing
and restructuring ideas.’
The high profile of this exhi-
bition as it opened in time for
the Edinburgh Festival suggests
that these ideas still have a dark
allure.
‘Witches & Wicked Bodies’ is at
the Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art (Modern Two),
Edinburgh until November 3
(www.nationalgalleries.org;
0131–624 6560)
Next week: Mary Queen of Scots
Tate, London; National Galleries of Scotland; Trustees of the British Museum, London
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25/07/2013 12:46
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