Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) posthumously. Around 1874, some fifty years after his death, the plaster murals were taken down and transferred to canvas supports. "Witches' Sabbath" was much wider before transfer – it was the broadest of the Black Paintings. During the transfer about of the painting was cut from the right-hand side. At its reduced dimensions of 141 × 436 cm (56 × 172 in), its framing is unusually tightly cropped, which some critics find adds to its haunted, spectral aura, although others believe it distorts Goya's intentions by moving the centre of balance and reducing the painting's impact. Goya did not title
Witches' Sabbath Witches' Sabbath The Witches' Sabbath is a term applied to a gathering of those considered to practice witchcraft and other rites. Prior to the late 19th century, it is difficult to locate any English use of the term 'sabbath' to denote a gathering of witches. The phrase is used by Henry Charles Lea's in his History of the Inquisition (1888). Writing in 1900, German historian Joseph Hansen who was a correspondent and a German translator of Lea's work, frequently uses the shorthand phrase "hexensabbat" to interpret medieval trial records, though any consistently recurring term is noticeably rare in the copious