Macbeth en Banquo ontmoeten de drie heksen 1825 - 1883

Theodoor Schaepkens made this etching, Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Three Witches, sometime in the nineteenth century. Shakespeare’s tragedy was a popular subject for artists throughout the period. Schaepkens, who was Dutch, studied in Dusseldorf in the 1830s, and this image shares a taste for the dramatic found in the work of many German Romantic painters. The image is filled with visual cues designed to evoke both the literary scene, and more broadly the concept of dark magic. Note the way the witches seem to materialize out of the very landscape itself. Schaepkens’ Netherlands in the nineteenth century was a constitutional monarchy with a growing middle class. Art institutions like museums and academies were becoming increasingly important, and artists were faced with decisions about how to position themselves in relation to the canon of Western art. By returning to Shakespeare, Schaepkens looked to an already established source of cultural capital. But in his fantastical rendering of the scene, he also asserted his artistic independence. Art historians consult playbills, reviews, and exhibition catalogues to better understand the cultural milieu in which an artwork like this one was made.