Need help. Influences of Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft?

Bruno Galasso: Agostino Tassi wasn't a particularly profound artist, or particularly religious, or particularly interested in the occult -- believe me. He's the famous rapist of Artemisia Gentileschi, and he just happened to be a successful specialist in landscape paintings, who also trained the great French landscapist Claude Lorrain. I can just about guarantee that Tassi had no personal interest in witchcraft, but landscape paintings of the period sometimes included scenes of sorcery or magic, because a few patrons found these interesting. Salvator Rosa, for example, was known for occasional paintings of this type, though they were actually rather rare. Most Baroque artists didn't paint such subjects, unless they involved the biblical "Saul and the Witch of Endor." See below. Aside from art, there are many scholarly books and articles on the subject of the socio-cultural attitude towards witchcraft in the 17th century (a negative attitude, of course, but one that d! idn't prevent some patrons from enjoying a witchcraft scene in a somewhat dramatic landscape painting). A famous essay was Hugh Trevor-Roper's "The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," and then there is Carlo Ginzburg's book "Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries". See also the articles below, which offer a variety of external references.I'm an art historian,and my field of specialization just happens to be 16th and 17th century Italian art. I know Tassi -- and the period as a whole -- pretty well, so I'm afaid I have to warn your friend against overvaluing the meaning of this painting. It's simply a dramatic, "proto-Romantic" landscape of the kind that was somewhat popular at the time....Show more