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date: 20 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article discusses the study of witchcraft imagery in early modern Europe. German art historian Sigrid Schade attempted the first major synthesis of witchcraft imagery. In a doctoral dissertation published in 1983, he argued that the witchcraft images of early sixteenth-century artists, such as Albrecht Altdorfer, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Hans Baldung Grien, transformed traditional notions of magic by locating the source of this magic in the eroticism of the female body. Schade’s work would influence the historiography of witchcraft images over the next two decades, either directly or indirectly, in two important respects: firstly, through a concentration on the work of early sixteenth-century artists, especially that of Hans Baldung Grien; and secondly, through the link created between witchcraft imagery and gender change in European society and culture.

Keywords: visual images, witchcraft, Sigrid Schade, witchcraft imagery, magic, female body, Hans Baldung Grien, gender change

Charles Zika

Charles Zika, is Professorial Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the History of the Emotions (Europe 1100–1800). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and in 2010–11 was resident fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, University of Goettingen. His publications have focused on the religious and visual culture of early modern Germany, and his most recent book is The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (2007).

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