Witches and Wicked Bodies

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum looking at how witches and sorcery have been depicted in art mainly looking at prints and drawings.

The images seemed to either be misogynistic or erotic or in some cases both!

I hadn’t realized that Mantegna’s print “Battle of the sea gods” was the first to show the slack breasted crone figure which became a standard image of a witch. Durer’s earliest dated print is “The four witches” but they are shown as beautiful contemporary women albeit naked.

The later Fuseli, rather gothic prints, are fun and it will be interesting to see how many are also in the current British Library exhibition.

The exhibition had interesting quotes literature in the commentaries and a good time line of witch trails and legislation to put the art in a historical context. In the later sections you did come away thinking Macbeth and Faust had a lot to answer for!

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Independent

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