ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on examples of witchcraft and early modern art from 1450 to 1550 in the heartland of the persecutions. Witches and witchcraft had become a prominent theme not only in theological, humanistic, juridical and medical treatises, historical chronicles as well as in moralizing literature of the time but also in pictorial representations – being produced and circulated often as part of the print publications or distributed independently. Group scenes of witches promise indirect access to the initiated who can be watched from “outside” without danger. Those scenes of female nudes became extremely fashionable at the beginning of the sixteenth century starting with Albrecht Durer’s “Four witches”. The image addresses voyeuristic impulses, plays with the desires expected from a male viewer and was shown in private circles as well as the later oil painting “Two weather witches” of 1523.
