01 Work, RELIGIOUS ART - Witches' Sabbath, with Footnotes - 151

Jan or Frans Verbeeck (Active Mechelen, 16th century)

The Witches' Sabbath

oil on panel

27 ¾ x 37 in. (70.5 x 93.9 cm.)

Private collection

The Witches' Sabbath is a term applied to a gathering of those considered to practice witchcraft and other rites.

Bristol University's Ronald Hutton: "the witches' sabbath represents a combination of three older mythical components, all of which are active at night:  A procession of female spirits, often joined by privileged human beings and often led by a supernatural woman;  A lone spectral huntsman, regarded as demonic, accursed, or otherworldly;  A procession of the human dead, normally thought to be wandering to expiate their sins, often noisy and tumultuous, and usually consisting of those who had died prematurely and violently. The first of these has pre-Christian origins, and probably contributed directly to the formulation of the concept of the witches’ sabbath. The other two seem to be medieval in their inception, with the third to be directly related to growing speculation about the fate of the dead in the 11th and 12th centuries." More on The Witches' Sabbath

Frans Verbeeck or Frans Verbeeck the Elder (c. 1510 – 24 July 1570, Mechelen). There is very little known about Frans Verbeeck. He was a member of the Verbeeck family of artists based in Mechelen. There were about 15 painters recorded in the archives of Mechelen with the name Frans Verbeeck. There were also multiple artists with the name Jan Verbeeck active in Mechelen. Frans Verbeeck is the best-known of the artists in the family.

Frans Verbeeck became a master of the local painter's guild in Mechelen in 1531. He was dean of the guild on multiple occasions including in 1563, 1564 and 1565.

The Verbeeck family formed a dynasty of artists producing a large output of paintings in a workshop with multiple branches. They produced mainly compositions of a small scale using tempera rather than oil. Despite the difficulty of distinguishing between the artists in the Verbeeck group, some works have been attributed specifically to Frans Verbeeck. More on Frans Verbeeck 

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