Witches did not come to the Sabbath empty-handed; they brought food for their demons as well. In medieval and early modern superstition, it was widely believed that the devil fed especially on children and human fetuses, and the two infant skeletons visible in Goya’s scene point directly to that terrifying world of belief. One is cast to the left, while the other is held in the center foreground by a claw-like or hook-like form.
The large-horned goat embodies the image of the goat-demon, imagined as the leader of witches’ gatherings; the oak-leaf wreath crowning its head intensifies the grotesque character of the scene. Flying bats in the background and the broad, almost empty space heighten the sense of darkness, fear, and ritual shaped by superstition. In this composition, Goya brings together folk beliefs, witch legends, and a world in which reason seems surrounded by night.
The work reveals the artist’s late, sombre outlook and his extraordinary ability to turn human fears into a powerful visual language. Witches’ Sabbath was created in 1797–1798 as one of six small rural scenes made for Don Luis de Borbón, and it later became an important work for art historians studying Goya’s relationship to superstition, religious fear, and social criticism.
Today it is in the collection of the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid.
