BAldung From 1512 to 1517, he worked in Freiburg on his most prestigious project: a large altarpiece consisting of 11 panels. It was a work that proved that the painter could realize the most complex visual requirements, for which he would be rewarded with a lucrative fee, which would form the basis of his further career as a well-to-do artist, especially after his marriage to Margarethe Herlin in which, by all accounts, both spouses showed an enviable sense of business, which is why Baldung was one of the rare Renaissance artists who was, at least partially, able to escape the harsh conditions of direct supply and demand, so it is not implausible to assume that he had more space than was usual for that era for autonomous exploration of certain themes. What was, on the surface, most significant was the fact that with the Freiburg altarpiece Baldung confirmed that he could 'stick' to a given plan and program, and that he was able - if only he 'wanted' to do so - to limit himself to the 'official' version of the Biblical narratives.
Therefore, on his four chiaroscuro drawings of witches that were created during the painter's stay in Freiburg, should be seen as an eruption of the repressed, as a rebellion of the author who found satisfaction in opposition to the conventional, that is, orthodox vision to which he was forced. While in the public space Baldung had to adhere to an orthodox interpretation (both in theological and aesthetic sense), offering the 'wider' audience content that was not at all disturbing, in the more intimate sphere he used the improvisational, but nevertheless magisterially precise medium of drawing to emphasize a more complex communication that touched the neuralgic points of a symbolic territory that was emphatically opened with On the Witches' Sabbath. In relation to the Freiburg altarpiece, the four witch drawings were directly subversive as the antithesis of domesticated rhetoric: a crucial indicator that Baldung - using an alternative methodology in both storytelling and painting techniques - could authorially maintain his privileged authorial focus. The altarpiece as a sacred object remains fixed to a single place that must not be approached too closely, since it is intended for passive reception of adoration or, at least, literal teaching, while the witch's image as an abject object, moving from hand to hand of a more trained and educated audience, expressing what is usually kept silent, raises intellectual dilemmas that focus on the consequences of the penetration of the sexualized body into humanistic discourse. Baldung's return to witches - precisely at the moment when he is required to respect imposed directives - is, therefore, a focus on the most subtle parts of the author's exegesis, but also a somewhat cunning way of not undermining the commercial appeal of the painter's writing.
Both works from 1514, which have the same title, Group of witches, and have the same visual range, are clear reflections Witches' Sabbath, almost 'rewriting' Baldung's powerful inaugural Act, a reproduction of what has already been elaborated: the author is aware that his origina staged performance so binding (for others, but primarily for himself) that the figure of the witch already in the first subsequent instance develops into a preferential expression automanirism. Discovery iz Witches' Sabbath needs to be reaffirmed again and again, because - in the mise-en-scène upgrade - it has passed into revelation, first of all, the author's sign which, in order to be all-pervading, must be perpetuating. The drama that has already been brought to a climax will be played out once more, because both melodrama and horror gain their universality through the thoughtfulness and emotional (and by no means semantic) transparency of reiteration: Baldung's repetition makes it possible not only to continue the story (no matter how meager it may be in plot content), but also to reach the deserved and achieved climax. The eroticization of the scene entails the eroticization of both the creative process and the reception, and thus no one can escape the 'vicious' circle: in the painter's inscription, no one remains 'innocent', given the globality of the sexual interpellation. And again, again, Baldung defines the human condition with the help of the all-pervading consequence of the Fall.
In the first drawing, four witches in different poses show almost equal degrees of rapture, involvement, and surrender. As flames and clouds swirl around them, produced by who knows what incantation, and the props of a newly performed magical ritual are scattered on the ground, each witch experiences for herself what it means to surrender to the forces that disrupt the natural order: this is the moment before the witch's ascension. Putto he straddles a goat with his left leg, and - like the witches - sets off on his journey upside down, riding the devil's animal. In this atmospheric intensity, each of the witches seems lost in her own world of lust and ecstasy, and yet the image represents a common transgressive ethos and eros of non-normative and non-standardlne sexuality. Four stages of trance: the witch on the left, like some consecrated or, indeed, possessed scholar, seems to be rhythmically rocking back and forth as she recites an untranslatable formula that may have been put into action, her colleague next to her is completely stunned, that is locked with the energy she has completely surrendered to, the oldest among them, with swollen nipples, expertly floats, levitates in the turbulent landscape, while with her left hand - the only lesbian trace - she holds the central figure just above her buttocks, and this one - and again: carried away - spreads her arms, with her hair down (loose?), not to greet, but to teach complete diabolical unrest.
In the second drawing, Baldung moves from stylization to vulgarization, from fascination to repulsion, from sublimation to scatological irony. With the discarded magical text, the witch on the ground - in a similar pose as A woman defecating (1513) - she is farting profusely in order to light a (magic) wand, and the cat in the lower right corner is vomiting. Nevertheless, the upright witch, with a tray on which is a (male) skull and bone, invites a cannibalistic feast. Perhaps because of these excremental fumes, the witch on the right has her hair up, while with the 'windy' witch she is holding a necklace with skulls and dice: a disturbed sense of 'beauty' in this 'jewelry' that becomes a metonymic 'noose' that determines death and fate. The picture is nevertheless divided by forks that pass horizontally through the legs of the two witches: this is not a 'device' for flying (the witch on the right is, anyway, too heavy), but a parodic exhibition space, a cynical preparation for 'barbecuing' hopelessly sagging meaty sausages, the most limp of which is the one touched by the oldest witch in the background.
Baldung is ready to orchestrate castration anxiety, to hypertrophy activate various points of the grotesque, for the sake of a 'higher' goal: to dramatize anew, however radical the context for the author's contemplation, especially when it is confronted with its constitutional limit, the hermeneutics of the female body. In the developmental line of his witch iconography, the analysis is established through the visual gradation of the very lack that stands at the ineffable center. Baldung's aggressive voyeuristic aesthetic - which would indicate the impossible episteme of the feminine side of sexual difference - thus allows the structural potential for the female gaze to appear, despite the pressure of the paternal metaphor, in special circumstances precisely in a sexualized context. On the first To a group of witches, amidst all the turmoil, the disarray in all directions, the epicenter remains firmly metonymically grounded, without any opportunity to dislocate, precisely because it rests on absence. Namely, on To a group of witches Baldung brings a fifth woman, who is seemingly hidden from the fiery jet. She does nothing but - looks. With an expression on her face that is not easy to decipher, a completely unknown woman has directed her gaze directly into the crotch of the central witch, which is marked, with the simplest stroke of the pen, by an almost invisible vaginal incision. Baldung's staging of this female gaze fixed on the female genital organ is phantasmagoric: above the head of the woman, who is not interested in anything happening around her except for her exposed vulva, a strange formation appears that takes on the appearance of a hand with a finger that also points to what must not be said.
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