Scenes of Witchcraft (c. 1645–49): Art, History and Details

Scenes of Witchcraft (c. 1645–49) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615–1673).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A huge upturn in interest in witchcraft emerged during the 1500s in Europe, but by the middle of the next century—at least among the cultured elite of Florence—a backlash arose against the many accusations of sorcery. Artists and writers explored the topic more out of curiosity and amusement, chief among them the poet, painter, and satirist Salvator Rosa, who examined witchcraft with gusto in numerous poems and works of art, including these four paintings. They show a range witch types, from the beautiful enchantress to the old crone to the male sorcerer, and represent activities commonly associated with black magic: levitation, love potions, devil worship, the invocation of demons, and transformation. A common subject in Italian art of the 1600s, transformation was usually seen in interpretations of myths based on Ovid's ancient Latin text, the Metamophoses. Rosa found a novel way to exploit this idea, drawing attention to his own ability to transform paint and canvas into a disturbing, nightmarish world.

Object facts

• Title: Scenes of Witchcraft
• Date: c. 1645–49
• Creator attribution: Salvator Rosa (Italian, 1615–1673)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 76.2 x 9.6 cm (30 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 54.5 cm (21 7/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.37

A detail from the museum

The artist chose the painting's shape to reference the foundational role of the circle in practicing magic.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Salerno, Luigi, and Ira Kohn. "Four Witchcraft Scenes by Salvator Rosa." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 7 (September 1978): 225–231. Published as: Witches' Scene, Witches' Sabbath
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.