Those accused of witchcraft during the European witch-hunt were generally understood to be extremely malicious and aggressive. As a moral and social threat, they had to be excluded from the benefits and protections of church and state, if not wholly exterminated. For this reason they were made to appear alien and other, and emotions were mobilised to make them such.
This lecture will explore some of the key emotional and visual strategies used by artists to identify witches as dangerous others. A predominant technique in the sixteenth century was to create discursive links to established motifs and visual codes that carried strong emotional attachments or resonances – the presence of devils or monsters; bodily attributes such as wild hair; objects such as body parts; or established motifs such as the riding of wild animals or signs of inversion. In the seventeenth century, however, viewers were often drawn into a complex emotional narrative that demonstrated the collective threat of witchcraft for Christian communities and moral order. Artists displayed this threat through the emotions encoded in the dances that witches performed during their Sabbath rituals, performances that began to feature in images of witchcraft for the first time.
Charles Zika is a Professorial Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800). His interests lie in the intersection of religion, emotion, visual culture, and print in early modern Europe. He is the author of The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Routledge, 2007), co-editor of a collection with Cathy Leahy and Jenny Spinks related to a 2012 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, The Four Horsemen: Apocalypse, Death and Disaster (NGV, 2012), and co-author, with Margaret Manion, of Celebrating Word and Image 1250–1600 (Fremantle, 2013).
Presented by: Charles Zika
Professorial Fellow
School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
The University of Melbourne
Thursday 15 October
6.00 pm
The University of Queensland Art Museum
Free. All welcome.
Bookings essential as numbers are limited.
Click here to RSVP by Friday 9 October
