Witch riding backwards on a goat

This engraving was made in about 1500, soon after Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving, Four Witches or Four Naked Women (dated 1497; Hollstein 69). They are Dürer’s only prints which relate directly to the contemporary obsession with witches, reflected most vividly in the popular guide to witch-hunting, the Witches' Hammer written by Dominican inquisitors (H. Kramer and J. Sprenger, Malleus maleficarum [Strasbourg, 1487; reprinted in Nuremberg by A. Koberger in 1494 and 1496]). Witchcraft was thought to reverse the natural order of things, so the hair of the witch streams out in one direction, while the goat and the trail of drapery indicate the opposite direction. Even Dürer’s familiar 'AD' monograph is wittily reversed.

The print was an obvious source of inspiration to Dürer’s pupil Hans Baldung, who vividly expressed the early sixteenth-century fascination with witches by giving them a focal position in his art for the duration of his career: his most famous woodcuts are the Witches' Sabbath, 1510 (Hollstein 235 ) and the Bewitched Groom, 1544-5 (Hollstein 237 ).

In this engraving, the witch sits backwards on a leaping goat. She is depicted as a shrieking hag. She clutches one of its horns in one hand and a broomstick or spindle in the other. Her hair flies out behind her and the stones of a hailstorm rain down towards her from the upper right. Witches were then believed capable  raising storms and other forms of destruction. Below her, four putti disport themselves, the arrangement of their bodies forming a ring shape with the goat. The latter is symbol of lust and was thought to embody the devil. One putto carries an alchemist's pot to use as her cauldron, another holds a thorn apple plant, an ingredient with magical properties, and a third, with his bottom pointed towards the viewer, is breaking wind.

See http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=765052&partId=1

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O781150/witch-riding-backwards-on-a-print-durer/

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                               November 2016