Can a caricature be caricatured ? The case of the witches’ sabbath in the 18th century. Observations on an anonymous painting

Although the role of images in the construction and circulation of beliefs about witches has been widely studied, their function in the critique of magical phenomena, especially in relation to the decline of witchcraft, remains much more in the shadows. The ultimate aim of this essay is therefore to examine this phase from an iconographic point of view, in order to shed light on the period and the circumstances in which the Witches’ Sabbath became the object of parody, not only literary but also figurative. A phenomenon that was neither obvious nor predictable, as still in mid 18th century it had to contend with the opposition of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, who feared that to challenge the existence of the Sabbath was to ques-tion the existence of the devil, and thus of God himself.