Häxan
While watching this wonderful and often overlooked silent era film it started to dawn on me that the Devil and Daemons in the film look very much like those from various High Middle Ages illuminated manuscripts and wood block carvings.
With the witches hour at hand, I looked into information on the director’s research into this wonderful world of imagery of Ole’ Scratch and his cloven hoofed pals to find that Benjamin Christensen had indeed did some traveling to look at the old volumes from many different areas of Europa in order to maintain a strict aesthetic pastiche harking to the days of Codex Gigas and other volumes dealing with the Dark Prince and his minions.
So without further ado…
Plate-01: The Devil as seen in the 13th Century book Codex Gigas or Giant Book, which is also the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. The Devil represented here is reputed to have been drawn by a monk who sold his soul to the Devil.
Plate-02: The Devil as seen in Häxan, the relation to Medieval manuscripts are more than evident.
Plate-03: Taddeo di Bartolo, The Last Judgement, detail of the Leviathan, San Gimignano, Collegiata.
Plate-04: The Witches Mass scene from Häxan, again many similarities can be seen and appreciated. It is said he had spent more time on these scenes to be painstakingly reenactments of various sources (such as the scene where the Witches kiss the Devil’s rump and stomping on the cross.)