Portrayals of the Three Witches

As far as I have seen, there are two different ways that are mainly used to depict the witches in adaptations of Macbeth. Some adaptations (such as in Polanski's movie) choose to portray the witches as elderly women, and other adaptations depict them as beautiful and young women (for example in this painting). So two contrasting methods, age and youth, are used to make the witches look as deceiving as possible and although these two means are starkly different, I would say they are equally effective. When other characters see old people with wrinkles and hunchbacks, they'll assume them to be harmless, normal human beings. Similarly when the witches are young people with pretty faces and kind smiles people will not assume them to be evil supernatural beings in disguise. (It is actually more fitting for a young witch to say the phrase from the play, "foul is fair and fair is foul", as she herself would be both fair and foul.) In the end, there is no one true best portrayal, as both decisions successfully hide the witches out-of-the-ordinary and ominious nature (until they start chanting spells or making gloomy prophecies about your future, of course!).