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

Scenes of Witchcraft: Morning (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:

Rosa's first scene depicts a young witch who plunges her knife into a writhing amphibian at dawn. The dark clouds of daybreak and anthropomorphic crags provide a gloomy atmosphere, while malevolent birds with piercing beaks hover around the central stabbing, focusing the viewer's attention on the witch's vicious act. The only beautiful enchantress Rosa ever painted, her elegance and ability to transform men into animals evokes the goddess Circe. But Rosa wasn't interested in classical imagery; he inverted expectations by transforming Circe into an explicitly violent sorceress. Her calm expression makes the terrifying gesture of upraised human hands among the birds even more disturbing.

Object facts

• Title: Scenes of Witchcraft: Morning
• 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: 1977.37.1

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

• Langdon, Helen. Salvator Rosa Paint and Performance. London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2022. .
• Fabbri, Sara. “Quattro Tondi con Incantesimi di Salvator Rosa nella collezione del marchese Filippo Niccolini.” Notizie da Palazzo Albani XXXVIII (2009): 81-104.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 3. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

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.