Four Witches (Four naked women) Durer Engravings (1471-1528)

Description of Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Witches

It is safe to say of this painting that it is one of the most popular in Dürer’s oeuvre. The engraving is called The Four Witches, and now we will examine in detail why it is so called by art historians.

The engraving depicts a small and dark room that has no decorations or furnishings other than one small lamp. The room somewhat resembles a small cramped bag, which is united by something incomprehensible, mysterious. Thus, we see before us four naked women, only small cloaks they have with them, but these only emphasize the nakedness of the girls.

We only see each of them half-turned, but the poses are not repeated. The girls are like the four sides of the horizon. But it’s not just their nudity that unites them. The gazes of the young nymphs are directed at something completely invisible and incomprehensible to the average viewer. They see something supernatural.

The girls’ heads are interestingly decorated. Two of them have beautiful headscarves, the one on the left wears a tall and unusual cap, but the fourth one decided to just leave her careless curls and came out with her head uncovered.

Pay attention to the proportions of the girls: one of them has a perfectly small and neat head if you correlate it to the whole body. That said, the profile can be called quite classic. The second is quite beautiful, but her gaze is full of suffering and pain. And in her body she looks much younger than all the other girls around her. As for the third nymph, we simply can not see her face, because she stands with her back to the viewer, but the fourth girl is half hidden from the viewer, as if she is shy to show herself. She has a simple face, but with a rather distrustful grimace.

Comparing the ideals of female beauty of those times and today, we see a great gap, but analyzing the era in which Dürer lived, we can say that the charms of the women depicted were very highly valued.