Witches' Sabbath (or The Great He-Goat; Spanish: Aquelarre[1] or El gran cabrón[2]) are names given to a fresco likely completed between 1820–1823[3] by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The work shows Satan in the form of a hybrid goat-human figure rendered in silhouette, presiding in moonlight over a coven of disfigured, ugly and terrified witches.[4] He holds absolute command over the women, who quake before him in fear. One of Goya's best known works,[5] it generally assumed as a metaphorical satire on the credulity of the age,[6] a mocking condemnation of both the popular superstition of the era and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. The canvas contains examinations of violence, age, death and superstition.[7]
Witches' Sabbath was painted at a time when superstition was widespread in Spanish culture and many rural peasants were susceptible to propaganda tales of secret societies, corrupted women and perverted religion. Spanish royalists and conservatives often used accusations of witchcraft as a means to play on the fears of the lower class.
Goya saw the Inquisition as wholly reactionary, and railed in his art -if not public life- against what he saw as a deliberate retreat into medievalism.[8] In this it can be thematically linked to his earlier etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The painting was made while the artist was living alone in mental and physical despair, around the age of 75. It is one of a series of the 14 so called Black Paintings[9] executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house. Goya did not intend for any of these paintings to be exhibited, did not write of them,[10] and likely never spoke of them.[3] As with the other works in the series, Witches' Sabbath reflects Goya's disillusionment with political and religious developments in Spain following the 1814 restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. It was not until around 1874, some 50 years after his death, that they were taken down and transferred to canvas support. Witches' Sabbath was originally much wider; damage during transfer to the canvas led to the loss of approximately 140 cm to the right. At its reduced dimensions of 140 cm x 438 cm, its framing is unusually and tightly cropped, adding to its haunted, spectral aura.
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Goya was tormented by dread of old age and fear of madness from the mid 1790s –[11] the latter an anxiety carried from middle-age following an undiagnosed sickness that left him deaf. He was living in near solitude in a farmhouse he had converted to a studio outside Madrid, which became known as "La Quinta del Sordo" (House of the Deaf Man).[12][13] He was adrift from his former public office, and likely[14] to have been embittered by recent developments in Spanish politics. Like Goya, many liberals had hoped for state and religious reform and became disillusioned when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812.
Goya left Spain and Quinta del Sordo in 1824 for exile in France, and ownership of the house passed to his grandson, Mariano.[15] The titles of the Black Paintings have been attributed to Goya's children, and probably date to after his death in 1828; given the circumstances in which the works were painted, it is unlikely that he titled any of the Black paintings himself. The title of El Gran Cabron (The Great He-goat) was given by painter Antonio Brugada (1804–1863).[16] Witches' Sabbath derives its Spanish title from the Basque word for a male goat – akerra. This was combined with the word larre or field, to give Aquelarre, or Domain of the He-Goat.[17]
According to the 1830 inventory of Goya's friend, Antonio Brugada, the work was positioned in the ground floor of the Quinta where it occupied a full wall between two windows, opposite A Pilgrimage to San Isidro.[18] On the wall to the right were Saturn Devouring His Son and Judith and Holofernes, while Leocadia, Two Old Men and Old Man and Old Woman were painted on the wall to the left.[19] Art historian Lawrence Gowing observed that the lower floor can be divided thematically in two; a male side – Saturn, A Pilgrimage to San Isidro, and a female side – Judith and Holofernes, Witches' Sabbath and Leocadia.[20]
After a number changes of ownership, the house came into the possession of the Belgian Baron Emile d'Erlanger in 1874.[21] After many years hanging on the walls, the murals had deteriorating badly. In order to preserve them the new owner of the house had them transferred to canvas under the direction of the curator of the Museo del Prado, Salvador Martinez Cubells.[22] Following their exhibition at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878, where they were met with little reaction, d'Erlanger donated them to the Spanish state in 1881.[23][24]
Witches' Sabbath shows the Devil in the form of a horned goat, a symbol of animal instinct,[25] holding court before a coven of witches. Hulking, he stands to the left with his back to the viewer as a silhouette. He wears a long beard while his mouth is wide open as if screaming. Before him crouch a circle of fearful women.[2] The devil's absolute power over them has been compared to that of the king in Goya's 1815 The Junta of the Philippines, where authority is gained not from respect or personal charisma, but through fear and domination.[4] The women comprise a mixture of old and young, but share similar twisted facial expressions. They are mostly scowling and nervous, yet for the most part obedient. To the left of the devil, with her back to the viewer but her face in half profile, sits an old witch in a white hooded headdress resembling a nun's habit. A number of bottles and vials lie to her right. Hughes has speculated that these "must contain the drugs and philters needed for the devilish ceremonies."[26]
Only one woman differs – she is shown sitting on a chair to the far right. She is apart from the main group and her face is hidden by a black veil. It has been speculated that this woman is about to be initiated into the coven.[26] Others suggest that she may represent the artist's maid Leocadia Weiss, whose portrait hung alongside this work in La Quinta del Sordo.[27] The faces of the two main figures – those of the goat and the woman to the far right – are hidden.
As with the other works in the "Black Paintings", Goya began with a black background which he then painted over with lighter colours. In some of the darker areas of Witches' Sabbath, he let the black seep through, most obviously in the figure of the Devil, who is rendered entirely in black. Goya worked with broad and heavy brush strokes using tones of grey, blue and brown. It is likely that he worked with mixed materials; chemical analysis shows the use of oils.[23] In his use of tone to create atmosphere, Goya drew on a tradition in Spanish art that stretched back to Velázquez (1599–1660) and Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652). Ribera was an admirer of Caravaggio (1571–1610) and adapted the Italian's pioneering use of tenebrism and chiaroscuro. The eyes of some of the figures emit beams of white light.[27] Goya learned from these sources, and was also interested in the work of Rembrandt, some of whose prints he owned.[28]
In contrast to his earlier murals, these works were not painted as frescoes. A mixed medium was probably used, as there are traces of oil. From x-ray it can be seen that in most the final image was painted over preparatory to drawing. Witches' Sabbath is the exception, having been painted directly on to the canvas. In contrast to the others, this work was not altered significantly by Goya after its first sketching. Like all the "Black Paintings", it is worked up through heavy slashing brush-strokes.[29] The canvas was first underlaid with thick carbon black, before the image was created using white lead, Prussian blue, vermillion of mercury, and crystals of powdered glass, orpiment and iron oxides.[30]
Author Fred Licht notes that in the series, Goya's brushwork is "clumsy, ponderous, and rough" and lacking finish in comparison to his other work. Licht believes this was a deliberate approach by the artist to convey both his dismay at human inadequacy, and his own feelings of personal doubt.[31]
The work was created in a powerful rage against the royalists and clergy who had retaken control of Spain after the Peninsular War of 1807–1814. Advocates of the Enlightenment sought to redistribute land to the peasants, educate women, publish a vernacular Bible, replace superstition with reason and end the Inquisition. Witch hunting was one of the main preoccupations of the 17th century Logroño Inquisition,[32] and idealist liberals such as Goya were opposed by traditionalists who blocked reform.
As court painter, Goya was a part of the established traditional order. However, since his death, numerous paintings and etchings have emerged that indicate that he had a firm conviction in favour of enlightened reason. He kept these beliefs private: they were only expressed in his art, and his more sensitive works were not published at the time for fear of reprisal or persecution. Witches' Sabbath is one such painting, and mocks and ridicules the superstition, fear and irrationality of the ignorant who put faith in ghouls, quack doctors and tyrants.[8][32]
Goya had examined the imagery of witches in his earlier Caprichos series of aquatint prints,[33] and this later work shares mood and tone with his similarly titled Witches' Sabbath of 1789. In both the 1789 and 1822 pictures the Devil is shown as a he-goat surrounded by terrified and seated women paying their respects.[34] The 1789 painting utilises traditional imagery of witchcraft in that many of the symbols used are inverted. The goat extends his left rather than right hoof towards the child, while the quarter moon faces out of the canvas at the top left corner.[35] The inversion is used as a metaphor to describe the irrational undermining of the liberals who argued for scientific, religious and social progress. Many of the scientific societies active at the time were condemned by church and state as subversive and their members held as "agents of the devil".[32] Of the technique he used in the "Black Paintings", that of beginning with a black canvas, writer Barbara Stafford observed, that he "brusquely [inlaid] spots of light within prevailing darkness [and] aqua-tinted and painted visions [which] demonstrated the powerlessness of the unmoored intellect to unify a monstrously hybrid experience according to its own a priori transcendental laws."[36]
The fact that the Black Paintings were executed as fresco-secco is a probable cause for their relatively quick deterioration, and it is likely that they had begun to erode even before their removal from the Quinta walls.[37] According to writer Evan Connell, in applying oil to plaster Goya "made a technical mistake that all but guaranteed disintegration." That he used chalk for the preparatory drawings compounded the problem as oil and chalk generally do not mix.[38]
Many of the "Black Paintings" were altered significantly during the restoration, according to Arthur Lubow what remain are "at best a crude facsimile of what Goya painted."[22] The effects of time on the murals, coupled with the inevitable damage caused by the delicate operation of mounting the crumbling plaster on canvas, meant that most of the murals suffered extensive damage and lost a lot of paint. At the Prado, they were restored by museum staff, including Cubells, who repainted and restored much of Witches' Sabbath.
Cubells retouched a number of the witches' faces and the Devil's horns. He removed over 140 cm of landscape and sky to the right of the postulant witch that had been badly damaged during the transfer to canvas. This had the effect of changing the relative position of the young woman, so that she was no longer in the centre of the composition.[23] Some art historians have speculated that the area was beyond restoration; they consider it unlikely that such a large area painted by an artist of Goya's stature would be lightly discarded.[26]
Others believe the removal was for aesthetic reasons, as an attempt to bring balance to a very long canvas, that the empty space to the right was considered 'unnecessary'.[39] Yet Goya had often utilised empty space for dramatic and evocative effect, notably in The Dog and Unfortunate events in the front seats of the ring of Madrid, and the death of the Mayor of Torrejón, where areas of canvas are almost completely empty and devoid of detail; a move against traditional artistic conventions regarding balance and harmony.[40]
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