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

Scenes of Witchcraft: Night (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:

In the pitch black of night, two groups of men are gathered in a forest. To the left, travelers apprehensively pause to watch a magician conjure terrifying apparitions. Since the Middle Ages, necromancy, the act of communing with the dead, was associated with male sorcerers. In Rosa's painting, the wizened necromancer who stands tall and resolute directly below a classical column is reminiscent of Moses, a predecessor to Renaissance depictions of sorcerers. Rosa's learned magicians not only invoke associations with philosophers and intellects, but they would have also referred to the artist himself and the intellectual elite with whom he associated in Florence. Just as a powerful magician could conjure strange creatures with his wand, so too could Rosa shape a strange world with his originality, intelligence, and the skillful use of paint and brush.

Object facts

• Title: Scenes of Witchcraft: Night
• 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: 1977.37.4

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.