Witches' Sabbath

Witches' Sabbath is a small oil on canvas that Francisco de Goya painted in 1798 as one of a series of six witchcraft pictures associated with the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, who owned a country retreat on the Alameda de Osuna, on the outskirts of Madrid. The other five share the format and subject. It is not known whether the series was commissioned or bought once finished, but it shows the painter's fascination with the fantastic during the years he was working on Los caprichos, with which it has a clear affinity.

At the centre of the composition stands a male figure with goat-like features, the Devil presiding over the rite. Around him gather old and young witches, and two of them hold infants: one emaciated, the other healthier, suggesting both will share the same fate. On the left lies the body of a dead baby, and in the foreground another child is pinned to the ground. The moonlit sky and the bats flying overhead complete a barren night scene that heightens the atmosphere of a nightmare.

The painting belongs to what critics call the 'terrible sublime', an aesthetic that aimed to unsettle the viewer rather than please, and that parallels pre-Romantic literature and music in Europe. Goya uses inverted symbols typical of witchcraft imagery: the goat advances its left hoof toward the child, and the crescent moon faces away from the canvas. Perhaps most striking is the critical reading often attributed to it: many scholars see the work as a mockery of popular superstition and of the church-backed return to medieval fears. The subject was also topical among the enlightened friends of the painter, including Leandro Fernández de Moratín.

Today the picture is held at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, having passed into the collection of José Lázaro Galdiano in the twentieth century.

Painter

Francisco Goya

Date

1798

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

43 × 30 cm

Museum

Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid

Genre

fantastic art

Depicts

witch, goat, Witches' Sabbath

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