- Date:
- 1720
- Original Format:
- Painting
- Item#:
- MES18172
Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman, scholar, and author. In 1685 he was ordained at the Second Church in Boston. Mather was eager for political influence, but his ambitions came to naught. In the Salem witch trials he first argued against execution but afterward defended the death sentence. He wrote more than 450 books. This is an eighteenth-century painting.