図像におけるエロティックな表象としての魔女

抄録

The witch is commonly visualized as female. The appearance of witch drawn in drawings is also expressed as the form of a woman.
I give an outline of the pictorial image of witch as follows. First of all, it is a natural idea that the witch is a female though it can be a male. There are overwhelmingly more witches in the form of female than of male. Next, the witch is to have recognized as an ordinary human being with living body. And, the witch needs instrument for practicing magic. That means the witch could not do any magical act at all by itself. Briefly, the witch appears in drawings as the ordinary living female person who is well versed in magical things or received knowledge from demons. This was not greatly quite different from the witch image of today.
I want to make an issue that there is time when the witch became the motif of the female nude figure. It was the age that would be called “Northern Renaissance” especially in Germany. The depiction of witch by Albrecht Diirer, who is the supporter of the Northern Renaissance, and by his companions influences on later generations. In order to draw the witch for artistic works, they selected the elements with high visual effects from the various ones of the existing witch images. And, they were made fixed as “the pictorial representation of witch”. The flight in the air, the bad weather, and the erotic female nude have becomespecially important elements. The point is that we cannot find any male “erotic witches”.
Hans Baldung Grien (ca.1484-1545), who was an apprentice of Durer, is an especially important artist in those who drew the “Erotic witch”. He has left eight pieces of witch pictures. He is consistently tying the witch to sexual matters. Witch's eroticism was expressed by depicting “the witch's intention for the flight” in his four works of the first half. It can be called his fifth work even lascivious, which shows the appearance of a naked young witch who corresponds to the dragon in the obscene posture. Baldung drew witches as women who are giving themselves up to a sexual desire of their own accord.
In the demonological witch theory, the witch is definitely a sexual seducer. However, it is doubtful whether this idea was keenly felt as a threat for people other than the theologians. Owing to the witch image of the nude as the “Embodiment of woman's eroticism”, it is likely to be thought that the demonological witch image, which had been only conceptually for laymen, could take concrete shape in their imagination.