For some time this subject was believed to represent the Temptation of Saint Anthony but more recently students of French art, noticing the greater attention given to witchcraft, have interpreted the subject as a scene of sorcery.(2) It has been remarked that in his Sabbaths Gillot shows something of the verve and imaginative breadth of Callot, whose work the artist would have known. Gillot (1673–1722) was an active printmaker, producing some 225 prints which were the subject of Bernard Populus's monographic study.(3) The artist would likely have known Callot's famous etchings of the Temptation of Saint Anthony but he never rendered the subject himself. Probably the confusion of the subject with the temptation of St. Anthony occurred because of the bespectacled figure in a monk's habit who is sprawled on a raft in the foreground of this highly charged fantastic scene. Equipped with all the accoutrements of black magic including books, candles, mortar and pestle, skull and crossed bones and accompanied by a cat, he consults a book or document. He is most likely a sorcerer conjuring a spell which has brought forth the convocation of witches and Bosch-like grotesque creatures that are to be seen all around and above him. Some of the witches in the Crocker drawing—especially the one on a broomstick—occur in his etchings of Witches' Sabbaths, making it likely that he executed the present drawing around the same time that he was working on these.(4) This suggestion is strengthened by the many animal head studies on the verso of the Crocker drawing, not unlike the heads of some of the fantastic creatures in the Sabbath prints as well.

Gillot's customary subject matter was genre-based and included scenes from daily life as well as theatrical subjects. His interest in theatre was comprehensive and had always included marionette theatre—which may have influenced his distinctive style of figure drawings characterized by light, lithe figures with pointed feet and wide spaced eyes, not unlike puppets. But the artist also had a lifelong interest in the fanciful which went back to his boyhood in Langres where he was enthralled by the local stories and legends about witches and sorcery. These, too, would fuel his creative imagination and provide him with a repertory of fantastic subjects including satyrs, bacchanals, and witches.

Gillot had learned to paint and etch when he entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Corneille about 1690. By 1710 he had been agréé by the Académie, where he was received five years later as a history painter. It is said that Corneille left him a drawing of a satyr that he had made after Carracci. There may have been other drawings of this sort of subject which to a degree would have influenced the young artist's taste in subject matter. As we know, he made various etchings depicting the lives of satyrs and also produced etchings of mythic bacchanales and Witches' Sabbaths. Populus mentions that Gillot was influenced in this by the stories he had heard when he was a boy, one of which was the Candle of Chiropa.(5) This story was actually produced in 1695 in Langres as a theatrical piece and ballet by the Jesuits, who staged a production in the collège at Langres where had Gillot studied before he left for Paris.(6) It is now generally agreed that most of these etchings of fantastic subjects were most probably executed by Gillot between 1700 and 1710.(7) However, the two etchings of the Witches' Sabbath were not printed until after Gillot's death when the engraver Jean Audran completed them.

After the death of Corneille in 1705 Watteau entered Gillot's studio, where he remained until 1709. While there he absorbed some of Gillot's subject matter, especially his commedia dell'arte theatrical subjects, as well as something of his manner, including his style of figure drawing.

Cara Denison, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010