Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat
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Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat (c. 1501) is a print by Albrecht Dürer.
- This engraving was made shortly after Dürer’s engraving 'Four Witches or Four Naked Women'; it is Dürer’s only other print directly related to the contemporary obsession with witches and may also be connected to a description in the ‘Witches’ Hammer’. Witchcraft was thought to reverse the natural order of things, so the hair of the witch streams out in one direction, while the goat and the trail of drapery indicate the opposite direction. The print was an obvious source of inspiration to Dürer’s pupil, Hans Baldung who vividly expressed the early sixteenth-century fascination with witches by giving them a focal position in his art for the duration of his career: his most famous woodcuts are the 'Witches’ Sabbath' of 1510 (Hollstein 235 ) and the 'Bewitched Groom' of 1544-5 ( cat no 183).[1]
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