The Isenheim Altar Suffering and Salvation in the Art of Grãƒâ¼newald
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, view in the chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony, Isenheim, c. 1510–15, oil on wood, 9′ 9 1/2″ x x′ nine″ (Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France) (photo: vincent desjardins, CC By 2.0)
Object of devotion
If 1 were to compile a list of the virtually fantastically weird creative productions of Renaissance Christianity, top honors might well get to Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece.
Synthetic and painted between 1512 and 1516, the enormous moveable altarpiece, essentially a box of statues covered by folding wings, was created to serve as the central object of devotion in an Isenheim hospital built by the Brothers of St. Anthony. St. Anthony was a patron saint of those suffering from pare diseases. The pig who usually accompanies him in fine art is a reference to the use of pork fat to heal pare infections, but information technology also led to Anthony's adoption as a patron saint of swineherds, totally unrelated to his reputation for healing and equally the patron of handbasket-weavers, brush-makers, and gravediggers (he first lived as an anchorite, a type of religious hermit, in an empty sepulcher).
At the Isenheim infirmary, the Antonine monks devoted themselves to the care of sick and dying peasants, many of them suffering from the furnishings of ergotism, a illness caused by consuming rye grain infected with fungus. Ergotism, popularly known as St. Anthony'southward burn, acquired hallucinations and skin infection, and attacked the central nervous organization, eventually leading to death. It is perchance not incidental to Grünewald'southward vision for his altarpiece that the hallucinogen LSD was eventually isolated from the same strain of fungus.
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (fully open position, sculptures by Nicolas of Hagenau), 1510–15
Sculpted chantry
Sculpted wooden altars were popular in Germany at the time. At the heart of the altarpiece, Nicolas of Hagenau'southward central carved and gilt ensemble consists of rather staid, solid and unimaginative representations of three saints important to the Antonine order; a bearded and enthroned St. Anthony flanked by standing figures of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Below, in the carved predella, commonly covered past a painted panel, a carved Christ stands at the center of seated apostles, six to each side, grouped in separate groups of three. Hagenau's interior ensemble is therefore symmetrical, rational, mathematical and replete with numerical perfections—1, iii, 4 and twelve.
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (closed), 1510–15
Painted panels
Grünewald's painted panels come up from a different earth; visions of hell on earth, in which the concrete and psychological torments that afflicted Christ and a host of saints are rendered every bit visions wrought in dissonant psychedelic color, and played out by distorted figures—men, women, angels and demons—lit past streaking strident light and placed in eerie other-worldly landscapes. The painted panels fold out to reveal three distinct ensembles. In its common, airtight position the primal panels close to depict a horrific, night-time Crucifixion.
Crucifixion (detail), Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15
The macabre and distorted Christ is splayed on the cross, his hands writhing in agony, his torso marked with livid spots of pox. The Virgin swoons into the waiting artillery of the immature St. John the Evangelist while John the Baptist, on the other side (not unremarkably depicted at the Crucifixion), gestures towards the suffering trunk at the heart and holds a coil which reads "he must increase, but I must subtract." The emphatic physical suffering was intended to be thaumaturgic (miracle performing), a bespeak of identification for the citizenry of the hospital. The flanking panels depict St. Sebastian, long known every bit a plague saint because of his torso pocked past arrows, and St. Anthony Abbot.
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (second position), 1510–fifteen
The second position emphasizes this hope of resurrection. Its panels depict the Annunciation, the Virgin and Child with a host of musical angels, and the Resurrection. The progression from left to right is a highlight reel of Christ'southward life.
Crucifixion (detail), Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15
In the predella console is a Lamentation, the sprawling and horrifyingly punctured dead body of Christ is presented as an invitation to contemplate bloodshed and resurrection.
Virgin and child (particular), Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15 (photo: Gzen92, CC By-SA 4.0)
Idiosyncratic visions
All three scenes are, withal, highly idiosyncratic and personal visions of Biblical exegesis; the musical angels, in their Gothic bandstand, are lit by an eerie orange-yellow light while the next Madonna of Humility sits in a twilight landscape lit by flickering, fiery atmospheric clouds.
Resurrection and Proclamation panels , Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15 (photo: Edelseider, CC BY 2.0)
The Resurrection panel is the strangest of these inner visions. Christ is wreathed in orange, red and yellow body halos and rises like a streaking fireball, hovering over the sepulcher and the bodies of the sleeping soldiers, a combination of Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascent.
Far left and far right panels seen when altarpiece is fully open (here illustrated sided-past-side). The Temptations of Saint Anthony (left), Anthony visited past Saint Paul (right), Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15 (photo: Gzen92, CC By-SA 4.0)
Hybrid demons
Grünewald saves his most esoteric visions for the fully open position of the altar, in the two inner panels that flank the key sculptures. On the left, St. Anthony is visited in the blasted-out wilderness by St. Paul (the starting time hermit of the desert)— the 2 are about to be fed by the raven in the tree above, and Anthony will afterward be called upon to bury St. Paul. The meeting cured St. Anthony of the misperception that he was the beginning desert hermit, and was therefore a lesson in humility.
Temptations of Saint Anthony panel (detail), Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1510–15 (photo: Edelseider, CC By 2.0)
In the final panel, Grünewald lets his imagination run anarchism in the depiction of St. Anthony'due south temptations in the desert; sublime hybrid demons, like Daliesque dreams, torment Anthony's waking and sleeping hours, bringing to life the saint's torment and mirroring the concrete and psychic suffering of the hospital patients.
Grünewald's mastery of medieval monstrosity echoes and evokes Hieronymus Bosch and has inspired artists e'er since. The entire altarpiece is a paean to human suffering and an essay on religion and the hope for sky in the troubled years before the Reformation.
Additional resources:
Ann Stieglitz, "The Reproduction of Agony: Toward a Reception-History of Grünewald's Isenheim Altar later the First Earth War" in Oxford Art Journal vol. 12, no. 2, 1989 (Oxford University Press)
Source: https://smarthistory.org/grunewald-isenheim-altarpiece/
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