The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe.Linda C. Hults. The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe The early modern period is a term used by historians to refer to the period in Western Europe and its first colonies which spans the two centuries between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution. . Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press The University of Pennsylvania Press (or Penn Press) was originally incorporated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 26 March 1890, and the imprint of the University of Pennsylvania Press first appeared on publications in the closing decade of the nineteenth , 2005. xiv + 345 pp. + 89 b/w pls. index. illus. bibl. $49.95. ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m : 0-8122-3869-9. In this ambitious book Linda C. Hults sets out to study images of witches with the intention of proving how "witchcraft images participate in the doubly antifeminist an·ti·fem·i·nist adj. Characterized by ideas or behavior reflecting a disbelief in the economic, political, and social equality of the sexes. an , reciprocal relationship of male artistic creativity and feminine evil" (26). To this end, she has chosen artists from a broad range of contexts and cultures of early modern Europe: Durer, Baldung Grien, Francken, De Gheyn, Rosa, and Goya. The first two chapters provide historical context and theoretical models. Chapter 1 surveys past and current scholarship on early modern European witchcraft European witchcraft is witchcraft and magic that is practised primarily in the locality of Europe. History of European witchcraft . In chapter 1 Hults elucidates how her interpretation of the images is grounded in gender and feminist theory. In chapter 2, Hults places contemporary ideas of art within the developing discourse of witchcraft, tracing "how witchcraft images fit within the gendered discourse of artistic creativity in the early modern period" (27). The subsequent five chapters present case studies of the various artists, with Durer and Baldung together. For Hults, the witch was a Muse because "she became an index of the inventive capacity, intellect, and thus the heightened status of the male artist in the early modern period" (16). Hults is at her best in her iconographic analyses. Her careful, detailed readings of these woodcuts, engravings, and paintings are insightful and new. For instance, Hults contrasts the "intricate, velvet tonalities" of Durer's engravings with the "irreducible irreducible /ir·re·duc·i·ble/ (ir?i-doo´si-b'l) not susceptible to reduction, as a fracture, hernia, or chemical substance. ir·re·duc·i·ble adj. 1. linearity" of Baldung's woodcuts (81). The connection she draws between these images of the grotesque female body and the discourse of witchcraft is convincing and successful. Her claim--that many of these images, intended for small private groups of learned men, functioned like dirty jokes (96)--is entirely in keeping with the genre of demonological treatises like the Malleus malleus /mal·le·us/ (mal´e-us) [L.] the outermost of the auditory ossicles, and the one attached to the tympanic membrane; its club-shaped head articulates with the incus mal·le·us n. pl. , which recycled anticlerical an·ti·cler·i·cal adj. Opposed to the influence of the church or the clergy in political affairs. an jokes (Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers [2002], 303): "Have you heard the one about the nest of penises?" Historians of witchcraft would have liked information on contemporary viewers, but unfortunately Hults does not furnish such material. Did the learned men who commissioned, bought, or received these images as gifts not leave some trace of what they thought of them in diaries, journals, or letters? We cannot assume that their thoughts about women and witches always corresponded to hers. How were these images meaningful alongside depictions of the Madonna and Child The Madonna and Child is one of the central icons of Christianity, representing the Madonna or Mary, mother of Jesus and her son. After some initial resistance and controversy, the formula "Mother of God" (Theotokos , idealized i·de·al·ize v. i·de·al·ized, i·de·al·iz·ing, i·de·al·iz·es v.tr. 1. To regard as ideal. 2. To make or envision as ideal. v.intr. 1. wives, and Old Testament heroines? Could some of these images of witches--such as Baldung's The Weather Witches (the dustjacket art and fig. 3.12)--simply present a study in the female nude that was turned into a study of witches and retitled as such to make them more fashionable to potential patrons rather than, as Hults claims, an attempt by Baldung to use witch iconography to play "a game of forced abjection that generates (he hopes) the reconstitution of the patriarchal order and of the male self" (99)? As a scholar who conducts research and has published on Italian witchcraft, I found the overviews of witchcraft in each chapter too general. Only a handful of studies about Italy are mentioned in the notes and bibliography. Hults relies too heavily on surveys of European witchcraft in English. There is a vast body of scholarship on Italian witchcraft, much of it in Italian, that would have nuanced her claims. As a result, the evidence, at times, cannot bear the weight of the assumptions. For example, Hults argues that De Gheyn's The Parable of the Devil Sowing Weeds expresses the Dutch's "cautious view of witchcraft" (154). Can a work of art by one artist really represent a whole nation's views of witchcraft for the entire early modern period? Witchcraft specialists may wish to add to the context of her study, but this book, with copious illustrations and innovative theoretical approach, nonetheless remains an important contribution to the study of witches in early modern European art. MARGARET A. GALLUCCI New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , NY |
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