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

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.