A Witches' Sabbath
Cornelis Saftleven·c. 1650
Historical Context
Cornelis Saftleven painted this Witches' Sabbath around 1650, one of his fantastical genre scenes that combine the real and the imaginary. Saftleven was a Rotterdam painter who produced a diverse range of subjects, from peasant genre scenes to hellscapes and animal paintings. His supernatural scenes draw on the tradition of Bosch and Bruegel while reflecting the continuing popular fascination with witchcraft in the seventeenth-century Netherlands.
Technical Analysis
Saftleven renders the fantastical scene on panel with the detailed precision of a genre painter applied to supernatural subject matter. The contrast between the carefully observed real-world elements and the bizarre supernatural figures creates an uncanny effect that characterizes his approach to the macabre.
Provenance
Possibly Maximin Maurel, Paris; possibly sold by him October 4, 1865, as La Sorcière de Sabbat [see H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des ventes d’art, vol. 6 (Paris, 1911), p. 405]. Probably Baron Karl Kuffner de Dioszegh, Castle Dioszegh, Dioszegh, Czechoslovakia; his son Baron Raoul Kuffner de Dioszegh (died 1961) and the Baroness Dioszegh (Tamara de Lempicka, died 1980), presumably removed from Castle Dioszegh between 1930 and 1938 when it was among a group of objects placed at Christie’s, London, from June/July 1938 to May 1939 and marked with the number 804GS, still visible on the back of the panel [acc. to prefatory note in Parke-Bernet November 18, 1948, auction catalogue and electronic correspondence of Marijke Booth of Christie’s, London, November 23, 2004]. Paul Drey, New York, by 1945; sold by him through Maynard Walker, New York, to the Art Institute, 1945.
