Circe and Medea, the two most celebrated witches of the Greco-Roman tradition, were frequently depicted throughout Renaissance and Baroque Italy in fresco cycles, paintings, majolica ware, cassone panels, emblematic illustrations, prints, and drawings. In keeping with their descriptions in classical texts, Italian artists portrayed both witches as beautiful young women, and focused on their magical ability to manipulate men's forms through their pharmaceutical knowledge of herbs and drugs, exemplified particularly by Circe's metamorphosis of Ulysses's comrades into various beasts and Medea's rejuvenation of her father-in-law Aeson. What significance did these images hold in developing the early modern idea of witchcraft?

The prevalence of female witches, young and old, in antiquity reinforced the early modern conviction about women's culpability in witchcraft. In their activities, Circe, Medea, Simaetha, Erichtho, Pamphile, Meroe, and Canidia, among other witches, echoed the early modern stereotype of the witch: they committed infanticide, transformed men into animals, shapeshifted into birds, reanimated the dead, concocted magical brews out of herbs and body parts, performed incantations and nocturnal rituals, and bragged about their ability to invert the natural order. Considering ancient witches as historical figures, demonologists then used these classical accounts to adduce evidence of various supernatural powers. As the classical witches par excellence, Circe and Medea became synonymous with streghe. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola complains in his Strix (1523) that the ancients had only three or four celebrated witches, Medea, Canidia, and Erichtho, whereas today one can find six hundred Medeas in one city and twelve thousand Circes in another.