The author's fascinating reconstitution will not come automatically, but with a symptomatic 'delay', as if the desire needed to mature again, which will necessitate a change in format and the promotion of something that had been lacking until then, not only in Baldung opus, but in general in the entire treatment of the emerging witch iconography up to that time: the introduction of color. After the Freiburg frenzy in the years 1514-5, the tension perhaps suddenly calmed down, but only to be followed by a deserved triumphant repetition, this time with the addition that was missing to complete the image which can then be established as the author's final explication within the particular imagery which, thus, Baldung decisively predetermined. After chiaroscuro atmospherics from previous works, comes a superior realization of strong, striking colors in a newly built 'genre', so yellow and orange overflow Two witches (1523), while a particularly intense red spot serves to carefully emphasize an important implication. What was previously lacking - color segment - is finally called upon to strikingly define the mysteriousness, seductiveness, danger and eroticism of the witch figure in Baldung's authorial manuscript.
Although the painting is of smaller dimensions, intended for private offices or other more intimate spaces (and conversations), it nevertheless possesses and initiates a global effect, which is another of those charismatic moments when, no matter how special the Northern Renaissance was, determined by very idiosyncratic approaches and distinct artistic phenomena, it produces a cultural and artistic visual archetype of universal appeal and obligation. Within his poetic praxis, this meant that, in an ambiguous way, Baldung used the procedure idealizations - which, in principle, was accepted only when it came to holy or exceptional figures - emphatically applied it to an overly controversial, polemical, and even abject figure. The key confirmation of the legitimacy of the thematization and stylization rests on the dominance of fetishistic enunciation over ethical narrow-mindedness: even though she never leaves the problematic zone of disrespect for the Law and constant transgression, Baldung's witch, in an undeniable reversal, deserves it full signifier elaboration and sophistication. And alternative history deserves to be supported by a non-discriminatory mise-en-scène, in order to establish a strong - coming of age, verification, communion - aesthetic confirmation.
That's where they are from. Two witches a work in which the painter brings both himself and his protagonists to the limit, behind which stands an abyss of non-signification: the line that defines the horizon is a hill behind which is probably an abyss, a precipice in front of which one must stop, a step that must not be taken. Given that the 'action' takes place on such a high place, everything looks more impressive and grandiose: Baldung's monumental manner. From a great depth, on the right side, black smoke (a fire of enormous proportions?) billows, which then merges with the clouds, creating a sulfurous background. While in previous productions it was implied that witches can control elemental forces, on To the two witches they are presented - although we do not see, in the author's recognizable ambivalent strategy, any concrete act of weather magic - as meteo mistresses: with a hailstorm almost certain, Baldung's heroines express quiet satisfaction in the face of the chaos that will follow. The putto with his torch makes his modest contribution to this sudden climate change, and the goat awaits the consequences of the new meteorological situation: it can be said that the weather - in all senses of the word - has 'gone bad'.
However, the weather deteriorated not to justify the witches in continuing to cast evil spells, but to imprint even more strongly in the painting itself the process of idealization that has already begun. Which always comes in two forms: quantity and quality. The first dimension is clearly reflected in the difference between the original design (in which the crucial profiling of the painting with color that ultimately transforms phenomenology and morphology into a spectacle and enchanting ornament has not yet taken place) and the final shaping that essentially belongs to the mise-en-scène: as evidenced by the infrared reflectogram, Baldung's initial idea was 'reworked' by enlarging the breast of the standing witch, so that the nipple also became conspicuously visible, while the 'starting' blockage in the form of drapery was removed from the crotch of the other witch. In other words, the iconic substance of Baldung's painting is refined, by volumetrically emphasizing sexual attribution: the breast as the original object of pleasure and the vulva as the original point of origin - literally in the original drawing - are the basis of stylization as such, of fetishistic overcoming or transcendence.
But, idealization - within the painter's dispositif available to the author who is ready to embark on a more intriguing exploration of a field in which language cannot cope with the deficiency - does not imply that there will not be a stain of 'pollution' in the chosen frame: over the vaginal region of a corpulent witch who sat on a goat without any excessive expectation that she will overcome physical gravity, a shadow fell, an indicator not of some arrangement of objects in the scene, but of an internal constellation in the inscription of female sexuality. Given that in her left hand she holds a bottle with a narrow neck in which a small winged creature with horns is trapped, whose escape is prevented by something that, in the author's already recognizable symbolism, becomes a bright red apple from paradise, the cause of the Fall that remains forever 'stuck' in the man's throat (the speech apparatus is, by definition, damaged in advance, which is why articulation will never be fully realized), it is not difficult to conclude, heroically, that, after consumption, the dragon from the work from 1515 is now 'tamed' and domesticated, more a part of the 'packaging' than an active participant in the (super)natural event.
In this way, idealization formally returns from the sphere of geometric proportions and ideological prescriptions to the space of the gaze, that is, the transfer that takes place within it. The seated witch, who is anatomically realistically described, whose hair naturally moves in accordance with the wind coming from the right, who holds a realistic pose, looks precisely in the direction where the painter's crucial intervention in the scene took place: at the breast of the standing witch, which, in a half-turn, 'grazes' the gaze of the (presumed) male observer, thus starting the circulation of desire between the lesbian and heterosexual subjects, on obostano enthusiasm. Two witches are therefore a picture in which, in the domain of visual pleasure, a distinction is made between the natural and the artificial woman, between mimesis and concrete abstraction. The pose of the witch on the left is, in a prolonged moment, untenable: with her arranged all'antica hairdo where the curls are moved by an impossible breath of wind, the artificial position of the extremities, with a deliberately indecisive smile that can only be glimpsed and the carefully raised drapery as a canvas on which the author cathartically ends his witch adventure, she is a double Model, both for the fetishistic representation of the female body, and for the procedure of pictorial expression. It can be said, moreover, that the standing witch is, before and after all, artwork. Baldung's artificial script: while the buttocks are not deformed by such a pedestal, the witch's legs are not crossed so that she turns to the right and thus completely reveals herself, nor to turn to the left and thus completely hide the front, but to create a corporeal sign, a vertical eight, which in the horizontal signifies - eternity. Of course, a figure that will be carefully and bequeathed, but at the same time artistic, Baldung's inscriptions in the theme that he fatally appropriated: the only kind of idealization that the author could allow (to himself), and in a completely corrupting context.
In the rest of his career, Baldung will no longer be - much satisfaction achieved! - to paint witches. Until his testamentary work in which, among other components, the witch is invoked as an important, inalienable part of the comprehensive conclusion: the assembly of the final authorial mosaic.
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