Showing posts with label Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat). Show all posts

Friday, 18 January 2019

Wikipedia article of the day for January 18, 2019

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 18, 2019 is Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat).
Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) is an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Satan is depicted as a goat in moonlit silhouette who hulks over a coven of terrified witches; a young woman in black sits at far right, withdrawn from the others, perhaps in defiance. The mural is one of the fourteen Black Paintings Goya created on the plaster walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo, around 1822. He was in his mid-70s, living alone and suffering mental and physical distress. As in some of his earlier works, Witches' Sabbath seems to explore themes of aging, death, violence and intimidation. It is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age and as a condemnation of superstitions, such as the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. Some fifty years after Goya's death, the murals were removed from the home by transferring them to canvas supports. Today the paintings are in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.