"Cartouche with witches"

Cartouche – a decorative border for a coat of arms, emblem, monogram, inscription or painting, as well as an ornamental motif in the form of a decorative shield. From the 15th to the 19th century it was one of Europe's most popular ornamental motifs in art, mainly in architecture.

Easel painting, 18th century

German painter, early 18th century

Acquired from the Potocki family of Łańcut in 1944.

A painting in the shape of a vertical rectangle. It depicts a witchcraft scene in a medallion surrounded by a cartouche-wreath of mushrooms and plants. The colours of the painting are very dark, with a predominance of black and grey. The cartouche with volute decoration is placed on a pedestal, in the centre of the canvas. It is surrounded by forest vegetation: at the top and bottom, mushrooms tied with string, while the sides are embraced by blackberry and raspberry branches with fruits, hazel with nuts and oak with acorns. Alongside the mushrooms, a sprig of flowering buttercups can be seen at the bottom. The cartouche is topped with the mouth of a lion with a sprig of fern above.

The interior of the cartouche consists of an oval medallion with a scene of witchcraft, surrounded by a wreath of laurel leaves. The witchcraft takes place in a seaside cave, which opens onto the deep sea in which the crescent moon is reflected. Participating in the witchcraft are an old woman, a witch, standing at the entrance to the cave, depicted from the side, slightly stooped. In her right hand, she holds a stick with which she stirs a brew boiling in a cauldron over a fire. In her left hand, raised upwards, she holds a closed book. She has a strong, rough facial features and a long nose. The woman is dressed in a long, ankle-length shrouded robe, dark grey in colour, blown at the bottom by the wind blowing off the sea. She is barefoot. Next to the witch, on either side of her, sit three figures of fauns, devils(?) with animal heads and horns. To the right of the cavern, one can see a seated devil with a horse's head with horns and a hairy body. The devil has animal legs with claws. In his left hand he holds a burning torch, in his right a broom on a long stick. At the entrance to the cavern, lies a skull surrounded by two burning candles in candlesticks. In the foreground, in the left-hand corner of the painting, one might see a cricket sitting on a pedestal. The background of the painting is black. The painting is framed in a wide wooden frame, heavily profiled with bands of different types of ornament. The inner strip closest to the canvas is decorated with a stylised lesbian cymatium. The middle strip (the narrowest one) is decorated with a motif of repeating double pearls and the widest outer one with a palmette and stylised bell. On the opposite side in the upper left corner of the frame is a white slip of paper handwritten in blue ink: Nr 2, underneath Muzeum-Łańcut. Next to it, written in blue crayon, the letter R. On the right, fragments of a white sheet with the number 333. On the left side, fragments of a circular seal can be seen which reads: P...DOL illegible/...FIREN... In the lower left corner of the frame there is a white slip with red print: COMUNE DI FIRENZE MOSTRA DEL PIRATTO ITALIANO 1911 underneath is visible blurred handwriting: Sosnowski(?)...Dikov(?)...(Galicia) (?). Next to it one can see a reversed inscription done in white paint: P. MŁ N - and P 2084. In the lower right hand corner is a white card handwritten in blue ink: 2084, and below one may see written in blue ink the current inventory number S.3109 MŁ. Lined canvas.

One of the artists who undertook to depict the motif of a witch in his paintings was Hans Baldung Grien, a German painter, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer, whose works also depicted witches and who may have been an indirect inspiration for Grien to take up this theme. The works of the German painter definitely draw on the tradition of folk beliefs, and in his paintings one can notice folkloric elements. His depiction of witches contributed greatly to the shaping of the witch stereotype both in his time and beyond.

Yulia Dushka