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Art, Culture, and Mentality in Renaissance Society: The Meaning of Hans Baldung Grien's Bewitched Groom (1544)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Dale Hoak
Dale Hoak*
Affiliation:
College of William and Mary
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Extract

For the study of early modern society, Renaissance art often provides an extraordinary means of exploring visually the values and assumptions, attitudes, and modes of perception of those who inhabited, mentally and materially, the world of traditional, preindustrial Europe. The work of Hans Baldung dit Grien (1484/85-1545), a Swabian painter, illustrator, and designer of stained glass, illuminates one of the most familiar and yet least understood aspects of this world, the mentality of those who believed that some women were capable of influencing a man's sexual nature by means of witchcraft.

In a series of prints and drawings executed between 1510 and 1544, Baldung portrayed various aspects of the alleged activities of witches. As contributions to the iconography of witchcraft, these Hexenbilder were without artistic precedent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 488 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1985

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Footnotes

*

A faculty research grant from the College of William and Mary supported my work on this topic in 1982. Earlier versions of the paper were presented to the Medieval History Society in the University of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, 3 December 1981, the Mid-Atlantic Renaissance-Reformation Seminar, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., 13 November 1982, and the Renaissance Society of America, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 22 March 1984. For their encouragement, criticism or assistance at various stages I owe special thanks to Caroline Backlund, Eric Chamberlain, Miles Chappell, Miriam Chrisman, Craig Harbison, John Headley, James Marrow, Erik Midelfort, Bob Scribner, and Alan Shestack.

References

1 For biographical details, cf. Koch, Carl, “Hans Baldung-Grien,” Die Grossen Deutschen: Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1956), I, 401-17Google Scholar. Thomas A. Brady, Jr. has added important new information in “The Social Place of a German Renaissance Artist: Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85-1545) at Strasbourg,” Central European History, 8 (1975). 295-315. For a review of the earlier art historical literature, see Koch, , Die Zeichnungen Hans Baldung Grien (Berlin, 1941), pp. 61–66 Google Scholar. The most helpful recent assessment of Baldung's oeuvre is Hans Baldung Grien (Karlsruhe, 1959), a catalogue of an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, to which may be added Gert von der Osten, Hans Baldung Grien: Gemälde und Dokumente (Berlin, 1983). In English, a brief introductory survey of Baldung's art can be found in Charles Cuttler, D., Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel (New York, 1968)Google Scholar, ch. 23.

2 For the making of this stereotype, see Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (New York, 1975), chs. 1-3, 8–12 Google Scholar.

3 Hartlaub, G. F., “Der Todestraum des Hans Baldung Grien,” Antaios, 2 (1960), 13–25 Google Scholar; Hartlaub, G. F., Hans Baldung Grien—Hexenbilder (Stuttgart, 1961), pp. 22–24 Google Scholar. And see Marrow, James H. and Shestack, Alan, eds., Hans Baldung Grien: Prints and Drawings (Yale University Art Gallery; University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 18 Google Scholar and 275, where variations on this theme may be found.

4 Various allegorical interpretations have been advanced (anger, lust, sleep, artistic melancholia), but none is convincing: Radbruch, Gustave, “Hans Baldungs Hexenbilder,” Elegantiae Juris Criminalis: Vierzehn Studien zur Geschichte des Strafechts, 2nd ed. (Basel, 1950), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar; Gert von der Osten and Vey, Horst, Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands 1500-1600, trans. Mary Hottinger (Baltimore, 1969), p. 222 Google Scholar; Hults, Linda C., “Baldung's Bewitched Groom Revisited: Artistic Temperment, Fantasy, and the ‘Dream of Reason,’“ Sixteenth Century Journal, 15 (1984), 259-79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his review of Marrow and Shestack (Art Bulletin, 64 [1982], 150-51), Craig Harbison speculated on the implications of what F. G. Pariset and J. Wirth have seen as Baldung's “Epicurean” tendencies in the 1530s: “Perhaps Baldung felt himself capable of a secularized penetration of the secrets of nature, only … to return to more orthodox frustration by the 1540s. The Bewitched Groom might thus be a kind of Conversion of Paul (Paul's fall brought about by the proud and angry horse) and Lamentation over Christ (the groom sacrificed to the howling, almost mourning witch as in Mantegna).“

5 Marrow and Shestack, p. 275, suggested this in 1980. Charmian A. Mesenzeva, a curator at the Hermitage in Leningrad, subsequently claimed that the print was based on a late-medieval Franconian tale concerning the exploits and death of a legendary knight, William, Count Rechenberger, but the attribution is unlikely. Mesenzeva transposed elements of different versions of the fable in an attempt to make a composite version fit Baldung's image. In fact, the Rechenberger stories contain many functional details absent in the print. Most notably, however, the legends cited by Mesenzeva make no mention of a woman who is a witch; cf. Charmian A. Mesenzeva, “ ‘Der behexte Stallknecht’ des Hans Baldung Grien,” Zeitschrifi fir Kunstgeschichte, 44 (1981), 57-61. Johann Eckart von Borries summarized Mesenzeva's hypothesis in his review of Marrow and Shestack in Kunstchronik, 35 (1982), 58-59.

6 Térey, Gabriel von, Die Handzeichnungen des Hans Baldung gen. Grien (Strassburg, 1894), I, p. xGoogle Scholar.

7 I have used the text of Stöber, August, Sagen des Elsasses (Strassburg, 1896), II, 112 Google Scholar

8 Arensberg, Conrad M., The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (New York, 1950), ch. 6Google Scholar; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, p. 216.

9 Brady, Thomas A., Jr., “The Social Place of a German Renaissance Artist,” Central European History, 8 (1975), 300–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and see the same author's Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520-1555 (Leiden, 1978), pp. 141-143, 151, note 121. On the society and culture of Strasbourg, see two works by Chrisman, Miriam Usher: Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change (New Haven and London, 1967)Google Scholar and Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg 1480-1599 (New Haven and London, 1982).

10 Marrow and Shestack, p. 279 and plate 89.

11 Radbruch, “Hans Baldungs Hexenbilder,” p. 39.

12 Ibid.

13 Koepplin, Dieter, in Hans Baldung Grien im Kunstmuseum Basel, exh. cat. (Basel, 1978), pp. 73 Google Scholar and 75, n. 11.

14 Préaud, Maxime, Les sorcières (Paris, 1973), p. 2 Google Scholar, the catalogue of an exhibition (at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) of books and prints on the theme of witchcraft. Préaud paraphrased the story from Paul Desfeuilles’ translation of Stöber: Légendes et traditions orales d'Alsace (Paris, 1920).

15 Harner, Michael J., “The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft,” in Michael J. Harner, ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism (New York, 1973), pp. 125-50Google Scholar. The active ingredients include various plants belonging to the order Solanaceae (potato family), principally species of the genus Datura. They go by a variety of names: Jimson's weed, devil's apple, thorn apple, mad apple, devil's weed, etc. Others resembling Datura in their effects include mandrake, henbane, and belladonna. “Each… contains varying quantities of atropine and the other closely related tropane alkaloids, hyoscamine and scopolamine, all of which have hallucinogenic effects…“;ibid., 128. Julio Caro Baroja (The World of the Witches, trans. O. N. V. Glendinning [Chicago, 1965). pp- 254-55) notes that sleep could also be induced by smoking the leaves of the plants or drinking the boiled extract.

16 From Bergamo's Quaestio de Strigis, an unpublished manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, originally quoted in Hansen, Joseph, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgungen im Mittelalter (Bonn, 1901), pp. 195–200 Google Scholar, and extracted in Lea, Henry Charles, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft, ed. Arthur C. Howland (New York, 1957), I, 302 Google Scholar.

17 Harner, “Role,” p. 131.

18 Erik Midelfort, H. C., “Were There Really Witches?”, in Robert M. Kingdon, ed. Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European Renaissance and Reformation History (Minneapolis, 1974), p. 203 Google Scholar; Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, p. 220.

19 Jean Vincent (Vincenti), Liber adversus magicas artes et eos qui dicunt artibus eisdem nutlam inesse efficaciam, an unpublished manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, trans, by Lea, Materials, I, 303, from Hansen, Quellen, pp. 227-31.

20 In one version of the legend cited by Mesenzeva, “ ‘Der behexte Stallknecht’ 58-59, Satan's legions stormed the stable, skewering Rechenberger on the prongs of a pitchfork.

21 Radbruch, “Hans Baldungs Hexenbilder,” p. 40.

22 Fox, Alistair, Thomas More: History and Providence (New Haven and London, 1983), p. 143.Google Scholar I thank John Headley for bringing this point to my attention.

23 Ibid., pp. 143-44.

24 An illustration in Ein Kurzweilig Lesen von Dyl Ulenspiegel (Strassburg, 1515); Mende, Matthias, Hans Baldung Grien: Dasgraphisches Werk (Unterschneidheim, 1978), no. 235Google Scholar.

25 On the suggestive connections between witchcraft and the prosecution of arson see Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), pp. 533-34Google Scholar, 559-60; Soman, Alfred, “Criminal Jurisprudence in Ancien-Régime France: the Parlement of Paris in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Louis A. Knafla, ed., Crime and Justice in Europe and Canada (Montreal, 1980), pp. 48, 64-66Google Scholar.

26 The case is that of Daniel Hoffman, 1590, from the Hospitalsarchiv Haina, “Rezeptionsreskripte von den Jahren 1500.” Erik Midelfort kindly provided me with this reference. See Midelfort's discussion of this hospital, “Protestant Monastery? A Reformation Hospital in Hesse,” in Brooks, Peter N., ed., Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens (London, 1980), pp. 71–93 Google Scholar.

27 Christiane Andersson made this point in her discussion of Baldung's black chalk Study of an Old Woman of c. 1535 in Marrow and Shestack, p. 279, note 2.

28 Gordon Andreas Singer, “La Vauderie d'Arras, 1459-1491: An Episode of Witchcraft in Later Medieval France,” Ph.D. dissertation (University of Maryland, 1974), p. 95.

29 Delcambre, Etienne, “La psychologie des inculpés lorraines de sorcellerie,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 32 (1954), 383–404, 505-26Google Scholar, as trans, and quoted by William Monter, E., ed., European Witchcraft (New York, 1969), p. 105 Google Scholar; Monter, , Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca, 1976), pp. 135-36Google Scholar.

30 Cf. the illustration (by an unknown artist) of heretics (“Waldensians“) adoring the Devil in the form of a goat, c. 1460, MS. 11209, fo. 3r, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels, reproduced in Cuttler, Charles D., “Witchcraft in a Work by Bosch,” Art Quarterly, 20(1957), Fig. 2, p. 133 Google Scholar, and Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, plate 1. The original MS. in Brussels is a French translation of Johannes Tinctoris, Contra sectam Valdensium, a tract attacking the victims of the Arras witch panic of 1459-60. A similar illustration from MS. Fr. 961 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, is reproduced in Cuttler, Fig. 3, p. 133.

31 See the anonymous South German or Swiss pen-and-ink drawing of Melancholics, Cabinet Jean Masson, École des Beaux Arts, Paris, originally reproduced and discussed in Klibansky, R., Panofsky, E., and Saxl, F., Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (New York, 1964), pp. 393-95Google Scholar and plate 139.

32 Chaunu, Pierre, “Sur la fin des sorciers au XVIIe siècle,” Annates: Économies Sociétés Civilisations, 24 (1969), 895–911 Google Scholar; Horsley, Richard, “Who Were the Witches? The Social Roles of the Accused in European Witch Trials,“ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9 (1979), 689–715 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Muchembled, Robert, “Sorcellerie, culture populaire et christianisme au XVIe siècle, principalement en Flandres et en Artois,” Annates: Économies Sociétés Civilisation, 28 (1973), 264-84Google Scholar; Larner, Christina, The Thinking Peasant: Popular and Educated Belief in Pre-Industrial Culture (Glasgow, 1982), pp. 58–73 Google Scholar. Muchembled's article has been translated by Ranum, Patricia M. in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore, 1982), pp. 213-36Google Scholar.

33 Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978), 207-34, 241-42Google Scholar; Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge, 1979), I, 433-38Google Scholar; Mandrou, Robert, From Humanism to Science 1480-1700 (New York, 1978), pp. 114—17Google Scholar; Erik Midelfort, H. C., “Heartland of the Witchcraze: Central and Northern Europe,” History Today, 21 (Feb. 1981), 27–31 Google Scholar; Larner, Christina, Enemies of God: The Witch-Httnt in Scotland (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 15–28, 192-203Google Scholar; Larner, The Thinking Peasant, 21-57; Hoak, Dale, “The Great European Witch Hunts: A Historical Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology, 88 (1983), 1270-74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Lehmann, Hartmut, “Hexenverfolgungen und Hexenprozesse in Alten Reich Zwischen Reformation und Aufklarung,” Jahrbuch des Institutsfur deutsche Geschichte, 7 (1978), 13–70 Google Scholar. (I am indebted to Lionel Rothkrug for this reference.)

34 Cf. Hoak, Dale, “Witchcraft and Women in the Art of the Renaissance,” History Today, 21 (Feb. 1981), 22–26 Google Scholar; Baroja, The World of the Witches, pp. 216-18.

35 William Monter, E., “La sodomie a l'époque moderne en Suisse romande,” Annates: Économies Sociétés Civilisations, 29 (1974), 1023-33Google Scholar.

36 Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 197-98. See also Soman, Alfred, “Les procès de sorcellerie au parlement de Paris (1565-1640),” Annates: Économies Sociétés Civilisations, 32 (1977), 790–814 Google Scholar.

37 See also Hults, Linda C., “Hans Baldung Grien's ‘Weather Witches’ in Frankfurt,” Pantheon, 40 (1982), 124-30Google Scholar.

38 Radbruch, “Hans Baldungs Hexenbilder,” p. 32 (and the note on this page for references to accounts of the Alsatian trials).

40 Von Borries, in the review of Mesenzeva cited above, n. 5, thought that the latter's interpretation of the Bewitched Groom did not finally preclude the possibility that Baldung meant to portray himself in the prostrate figure of the stableman. In fact, Mesenzeva ignored the autobiographical implications of what she accepted as Baldung's coat of arms (“das Wappen des Meisters“), saying only that the unicorn was related to the Virgin Mary, a symbol of purity and salvation; Mesenzevat 57.

40 Koch, Robert A., Eve, the Serpent and Death (Ottawa, 1974), p. 22 Google Scholar.

41 An impression in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, showing the broken ridges of a well-worn and eventually reset block, suggests that copies like it were being run off well into the seventeenth century. I thank Eric Chamberlain, Keeper of Prints, the Fitzwilliam Museum, for bringing this to my attention.