Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, "Witches in the Air" (1798), The Prado, Madrid
It is a general phenomenon of our nature that sad, terrible, and even horrible things have an irresistable attraction for us; and that scenes of suffering and terror repel and attract us with equal power. Full of expectation, all will cluster around someone who is telling a murder story; we eagerly devour the most adventurous ghost story, and the more it makes our hair stand on end, the greater our eagerness.
-Friedrich von Schiller, On Tragic Art (1792)
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