After a week off we’re BACK with a bit of art we love. It’s by the Italian artist and architect Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti (1764-1831) and goes by the name of the Walnut Tree in Benevento.

There’s not a huge amount of information about Bagetti online. Asides from a Wikipedia page about him, there’s generally very little information other than a batch of his paintings available to gawp at. Which we duly did, as this guy was a phenomenal painter.

Bagetti’s Paintings: The Walnut Tree in Benevento and Other Landscapes

There it is. Have a click on the image and you’ll get a closer look at the thing.

It was immediately striking for us when we first saw it, that giant, alien thing hovering over a tree like there’s an alien abduction going on. Like this bit here.

It’s so intricately detailed it’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Bagetti’s work here is a watercolour, a style that usually evokes visions of pretty clouds, flowers, and happy sunny days.

But this work has an otherworldly threat about it. It’s beautiful, yet it’s also like something terrifying is happening beyond mere human understanding. How the occult has taken over and witches are leading a sabbath around an innocent tree, bewitching it as freaks and weirdos dance around the eerily lit scene.

Like a giant chandelier swinging around and around. After the event, the janara would go mental and cause horror across the region.

This is all part of an Italian legend of witchcraft, where women called “janara” (witches) would congregate at night around a walnut tree and do devious stuff. According to excellent online art source Inspiraggio:

“The subject had recently reached a wide public through the stage. In 1812 a ballet called Il noce di Benevento, choreographed by Salvatore Viganò to music by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and drew large crowds for its supernatural theme. Recent research argues that Bagetti attended the performance and drew the scene from life before completing it in watercolor, which would make this sheet a record of the ballet rather than a plain illustration of the folk tale. That reading fits his documented practice of working directly from observation, the same method he used for years in his topographic and battle views.”

This folklore of the witches of Benevento dates back to the 13th century. Historical reports from 1273 claim of gatherings, with statements from an actual witch called Matteuccia da Todi (a nun the rest of the time) indicating rituals took place under a walnut tree. She was put on trial for witchcraft in 1428.

Many trials took place and women were accused of using magic spells through this chant.

‘Nguento, ‘nguento,
mànname a lu nocio ‘e Beneviento,
sott’a ll’acqua e sotto ô viento,
sotto â ogne maletiempo.

Unguent, unguent,
send me to the walnut tree of Benevento,
under the water and under the wind,
under all bad weather.

The belief was the janara would smear themselves in unguent, get on their brooms, and fly about the place. With such beliefs, it’s good to see our ancestors were so very enlightened back then.

Away from the lunacy of that contemporary moral panic, the thing here is the piece is very removed from the rest of Bagetti’s work. His day job was as a civil and military architect and painter. He was supposed to paint stuff with millimetric, authentic accuracy.

The Walnut Tree in Benevento let him go off on one, taking an artistic route otherwise denied him by the drudgery of working life. Thus, it’s a curious anomaly in his canon, but one that you’re not going to forget for a while.

Other Works by Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti

Yeah, so the rest of Bagetti’s work involved landscapes and battle scenes etc. Fairly traditional from his era, and before it, although it is noteworthy for its brilliance.

View of Saorgio by Giuseppe (1893) is incredible. That’s of the seemingly snowy citadel in Saorge, a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes.

Bagetti was from Turin and studied music at first, before moving into other disciplines. By 1793 he was so established with his work, King Vittorio Amedeo III named him the designer of views and landscapes (vedute e paesi) for the kingdom of Italy.

He later moved to Paris and continued his work for Napoleon and ended up being a geographic engineer for the Napoleonic government.

Cleary very gifted, then, but also just remarkable how the passage of time removes great talents from the limelight. Bagetti was a big deal during his day, now his work seems to be falling into obscurity.