This print, known as the Witches' Sabbath,
depicts a fantastical vision of evil
women conducting unholy rituals. The
artist Hans Baldung Grien experimented
here with a new medium the chiaroscuro
woodcut to enhance the sinister
atmosphere.  Chiaroscuro wood cuts are
made by carving two or more separate
wood blocks in relief, applying a
different colour to each block, and then
printing the blocks in succession onto
the same piece of paper. For this print
Baldung used two relief blocks - one which
made the black lines and another one
that made all of the orange brown parts,
a very unusual colour which gives an
eerie quality to the whole scene.  The
British Museum also has another version
of this print made with grey rather than
the orange brown, but I find this one
much more effective because the colour is
so well suited to the subject. The few
white highlights scattered across the
image are actually bare paper left
uncovered by the black and the orange, so
it's like an inversion of the usual
application of colours to build up a
picture and again that kind of inversion
seems like an appropriate choice for the
subject. Of course witches didn't
actually exist  - this is a male fantasy of
women behaving badly -
so this print is a fascinating
revelation of how men in past centuries
feared the idea of powerful women and
created such powerful images to exorcise
their own demons.
