Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (23.1982)

by a man with a glass of wine. In the baekground, threc musicians are present who must have
played for the feasting couple. Thus Stecn combincd an aspect of drunkenness with the sin of
unchastity. This is evidenced by several elcments of erotic meaning, such as the disorderly bed,
the oyster and mollucs shells on the floor and the smali stone pipę placed directly on the woman's
pubes, watched with a lustful gaze by a cat (personification of debauchery). The erotic message
is additionally enhanced by the engraving hanging on the wali, presenting an owi, speetacles
and a burning candle with the well-known proverb Wat baetkeers off bril, ais den uijl niet sien
en wil, running underneath. A similar engraving hangs on the mantelpiece in Matthieu wan
Hermont's painting Cottage Interior (Milan, Museo Poldi-Pezzoli), showing an embracing couple
on a bench. A live owi is perched on a pole inside a barn in David Teniers's An Old Man and
a Maid (Madrid, Prado) where the old man is shown beside farming utensils and animals*
kissing a young woman.

Its nocturnal life style, mystcriousness and wisdom undoubtedly account for the identification
of the owi with knowledge and magie practices. In this meaning or rather function, which the
owi began to play in numerous cultural contexts, its contradictory ąualities, good and evil,
came to merge. Qaite often, as was also the case with antiquity and the Middle Ages, the owł
apperared in various representations concerning beliefs and superstitions. It continues to be
presented as the bird of witches whom it helps in their witcheraft and spells. It was commonly
believed that nocturnal animals, such as cats, owls, bats and snakes are endowed with magie
power thanks to the hypnotic ąuality of their gaze at that time of the day57.

Apuleius' ancient tale of a witch transformed into an owi was well known in modern times58.
Similarly, as carly as the Middle Ages, the ancient belief in the magie power of the spell-casting
owi was establislied59. In the Amsterdam edition of Ripa's Iconology, the personification of
superstitione is accompanied by an owi:

An old woman, an owi on hor head, an eagle owi at her
feet on the right, a crow on the lcft. She is wcaring
a chain round her neck with lots of scraps of paper
with spells attached to them, she holds a burning
candle in her left band and a hare under her arm.
In her right hand, she holds a sphere fuli of stars and
planets at which she looks with timidity60.
Having placed the owi beside superstitione, the editor repeated after Pliny, to whom he
referred, that the bird Was the harbinger of disaster:

The owi is herc presented on the (woman's) head
sińce the faint-hearted and superstitous believe
it to be an unlucky bird61.

Likwise, in Jacob Cats's pocm Spoock-Liefde..., owls hover above the witch brewing a magie

potion:

57. L. Salerno, ,.Four Witcheraft Sccnes by Salyator Rosa", The Bullelin of the Cleteland Museum of Art, LXV, 1978, p. 227.

58. ibid.

59. H. Schwarz, V. Plagemann, op. cif., p. 291.

60. C. Ripa, Iconologia, P.P. Pers's Dutch edition, Amsterdam, 1644, p. 60:

Een oude vroue, hebbende op't hoofd cen nyl, en voor haere voeteneen nachtuyj, aen haer rechter, en cen kraeye aen
de f lincker sydc. Om de hals hceftse een band, waer aen vecle brief kens van besweeringen hangen, in de f lincker houtse
een entsteken kacrse, en onder dieselve arm een haese. In de rechter hand heeftse een circkel vol sterren, met de planeten,
waer op zy, met een beschromt gesichtc, siet.

61. ibid., p. 61: De uyl worter op t'hoofd gestelt, want zy is genomen van de vreesachtige en superstitieuse Menschen

voor een dier van ongeluck...

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