This dramatic landscape by Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) illustrates the first scene in William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) tragedy Macbeth. It tells how Macbeth encounters three witches who predict his future. They represent chaos, darkness and conflict. In Georg Heinrich Busse’s print, executed after Koch’s painting, the witches are seen standing on the shore. In addition a veritable swarm of witches can be seen sweeping in around the rock jutting out of the sea. The movement continues along the winding road between the trees to end at the three witches in the foreground. This compositional feature contributes to the stormy image. Nature becomes an symbol of how Macbeth is moved by the forces within him.
Landscape painting had always been accredited with an inferior status. Koch renewed it by endowing it with a heroic quality. On the basis of the idea of a link between mankind and nature, he turned landscape into a poetical vehicle for a new sense of nature. In this way, the landscape represents the human figure. For three years, from 1800 to 1803, Koch lived in the same house as Thorvaldsen in Rome. The present address of this house is Via Sistina 141.
