The Wicked Crone and Other Stereotypes of Witches in Salvator Rosa’s Cleveland Tondi

By the 1640s, when Salvator Rosa assigned a prominent role for old witches in his series of four tondi dedicated to witchcraft (Cleveland Museum of Art), the stereotype of the witch as a wicked crone was prevalent throughout Europe. Yet, unlike his antecedents, he elevated the witch stereotype to the status of the tondi’s overarching theme. The Cleveland series has been hitherto perceived as a plain anthology of diverse practices of witchcraft, such as levitation and love magic. It has also been associated with the burning debate over the physical reality of witches, thereby interpreted as either a warning against the dangers of practicing witchcraft or a satire of witchcraft beliefs. The tondi are nevertheless devoid of any visual clue that would stir the fact/fiction debate and display only part of the supernatural deeds scholars have claimed to identify.

The series juxtaposes two tondi inhabited by old witches with two others, of a young sorceress and a male necromancer. Through a close examination of the series, I will argue that Rosa wove a dense web of parallels and contrasts among the participants in order to characterize them in terms of appearance, demeanor, power, and expertise. In so doing, he fashioned a visual compendium about witches of different ages and of both sexes, whose arrangement intimates rivalry and collaboration.