The Bewitched Groom (1544): Art, History and Details

The Bewitched Groom (1544) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hans Baldung (German, 1484/85–1545).

The work and its context

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

Envious witches were maligned as deceitful, sexualized women, hags who toppled righteous men in their lustful quests. Baldung's bizarre and unsettling image depicts a noble male figure lying unconscious in an open room, as a glaring mare (a symbol of unrestrained sexuality) and flailing witch peer in. The angular nose and chin and sagging, bare breasts of the malevolent hag echo the face and bony chest of Veneziano's emaciated personification of Death.

Object facts

• Title: The Bewitched Groom
• Date: 1544
• Creator attribution: Hans Baldung (German, 1484/85–1545)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1930.539

Collection credit

Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Two Woodcuts by Hans Baldung (Grün)." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art18, no. 8 (October 1931): 155-157.

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.