Witches and Indian women, daughters of Saturn: Arts, witchcraft and cannibalism

Abstract

The article inquires into the representation of women in the paintings and engravings about witchcraft in the XVI-XVII centuries, trying to establish an iconographic typology and covering the construction of negative stigmas attributed to the feminine body and its natural degradation. Through the support of visual sources such as paintings and engravings, mainly from the German Renaissance, the text demonstrates how the Indian women of the New World were associated to the witches of Europe and with the classic god Saturn, through the myth of cannibalism. © 2009 by Revista Estudos Feministas.