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Art / Witches' Sabbath (1798)
aka: Witchs Sabbath 1798

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Witches' Sabbath (Spanish: El Aquelarre) is a 1798 oil-on-canvas artwork by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya. Today it is held in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

It was purchased in 1798 along with five other paintings related to witchcraft by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. The acquisition of the witchcraft paintings is attributed to the duchess rather than her husband, but it is not known whether they were commissioned or bought after completion. In the twentieth century the painting was purchased by the financier José Lázaro Galdiano and donated to the Spanish state on his death.

Goya would revisit the painting years later, sometime between 1821 and 1823, as "Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)", part of the fourteen Black Paintings that he created near the end of his life.


This artwork provides examples of:

  • Hollywood Satanism: It features various symbols associated with Christian artwork, just twisted so the object of worship is Satan instead of the Abrahamic God. Ugly women reunite around a goat-like demon, offering him a starving child. They are also implied to be insane.
  • Rule of Symbolism:
    • The goat extends his left rather than right hoof towards the child, while the quarter moon faces out of the canvas at the top left corner. Both of these are sinister clues that indicate wrongness.
    • In the middle high ground, a number of bats can be seen flying overhead, their flocking motion echoing the curve of the crescent moon. Moon is associated with madness, suggesting that one has to be utterly (and increasingly) insane to worship Satan.
    • The child being offered to Satan is so starved, he's practically a skeleton. This is a symbol of death but is also a twist on what proper offerings are. One gives only the best to God but, since this is Satan, the opposite is true — you give him the worst.
  • Satan: He is portrayed as a garlanded goat, acting as a Jesus-esque role to a coven of witches. His appearance draws from the Baphomet archetype.
  • Wicked Witch: The elderly, impoverished women are a coven of witches congregating on their own Sabbath. It's heavily downplayed, though, since the only stereotypical traits they display are that they have Satan as their god and that they are ugly.

Alternative Title(s): Witchs Sabbath 1798

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