Titian and Vampires

Witches' Sabbath is the second story in the Crossed Lines series—a fusion of Supernatural with Caffrey Conversation. The premise is about crossing lines or, as Egon in Ghostbusters would say, blending the streams. The process was started in the first story, Whispers of the Night, when I mashed the FBI world of Peter and Neal with the rogue warrior domain of the demon-hunting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester. In Witches Sabbath, Neal's home turf of art is added to the cauldron.

The title of this story is taken from a painting by Francisco Goya. I've already posted about that artist's connection to the supernatural in The Dutchman and Goya: A Moment of Serendipity. In Witches' Sabbath, I added the sixteenth-century Venetian artist Titian to the mix.

At first glance, there's nothing in the works or life to Titian to connect him with supernatural events. When I chose Titian's painting Salome to be one of the works forged by Curtis Hagen, I hadn't conceived of Titian being involved with the supernatural. I simply felt that the beauty of Salome would resonate with Neal and serve as a good contrast to the hags in Goya's painting. Moreover, the image of a head on a silver platter could be taken to be symbolic of Neal's desire to identify the Dutchman for Peter.

But if Dean and Sam were to look at Salome, they'd probably view the painting in a different light. In Supernatural lore, vampires are killed by decapitation. Would the Winchester brothers believe the head to be that of a slain vampire? Could there be a second darker meaning to Titian's painting?

When I researched vampire lore in Renaissance Italy, I discovered that a belief in vampires was common. Undead beings supposedly feasted on the victims of the plagues that ravaged Europe beginning with the Black Death in the fourteenth century.

But there's an even closer tie between Titian and vampires. He died of the plague in 1576. Recently a female skeleton was unearthed in Venice from a mass grave of the same year who was apparently suspected of being a vampire. She'd been buried with a brick in her mouth that forced her jaw open. According to texts of the time, that was the recommended way to keep a vampire from feasting.

The texts don't mention any hunters being present in Venice. That is unfortunate. Like Dean and Sam, they would have known that burying someone with a brick in their mouth simply won't do the job.

The discovery of that skeleton set me to daydream about what other connections might exist between Titian and supernatural beings. You'll find out where that daydream took me in Witches' Sabbath.

Reuters article about a vampire unearthed in a Venice plague grave

Witches' Sabbath on Archive of Our Own
Witches' Sabbath on FanFiction