(Augsburg circa 1600–1678 Venice)
A witchcraft scene,
oil on canvas, tondo, diameter 43.8 cm, rectangular frame

Provenance:
Private collection, France;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph and for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

The Augsburg born painter Giuseppe (Joseph) Heintz, made his career in Venice creating view paintings, religious works and fantastic scenes with monsters and witchcraft scenes, such as the present painting. It shows a nude female figure, seen from the back, in an elegant, somewhat mannered pose which appears to have been taken from an elaborate drawing (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 84) by Heintz’s homonymous father, who made his career as a court painter of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Wielding a rod and consulting a large volume, the woman is clearly a sorceress: the monstrous creatures towards the right serve to confirm this identification.

These little spidery, Bosch-like monsters are the most fascinating part of the painting. Heintz’s pictorial sources for such figures range from paintings by Bosch himself (three works by the painter were kept in the Venetian Ducal Palace) to various works by his followers as well as prints, in particular by Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella.

The present work is an example of Giuseppe Heintz’s Stregonerie, a category of paintings which were eagerly collected in mid-seventeenth-century Venice, as can be gauged by the praise the compostions received from the authoritative contemporary Venetian critic, Marco Boschini, in his Carta del navegar pitoresco.