Isenheim Altarpiece

Isenheim Altarpiece, panels painted in oils on a sculpted altarpiece created by German artist Matthias Grünewald about 1512 to 1515. Little is known of Grünewald’s life, but he is famous for his undisputed masterpiece, the large folding altar painted for the Monastery of St. Anthony hospital chapel at Isenheim in Alsace, then part of Germany.

The Isenheim Altarpiece’s physical structure is complex, comprising two sets of folding wings. By folding and unfolding these wings, the altarpiece offers three distinct views. This view shows the patron saint of victims of the plague, St. Sebastian, on the left wing; the patron saint of the hospital’s religious order, St. Anthony, on the right wing; and Jesus Christ being laid in his tomb on the lowest wing. In the middle panel is Grünewald’s dark and harrowing depiction of the crucifixion. The horribly wounded, etiolated, crucified figure of Christ, dead or close to death, is flanked by the pointing St. John the Baptist, the desperately praying St. Mary Magdalene, and the traumatized Virgin Mary, who is held by St. John the Apostle.

The Isenheim hospital cared for victims of the plague and St. Anthony’s fire—an intensely painful burning sensation in the limbs caused by eating cereals contaminated by ergot. Grünewald’s Christ, who has clearly experienced a great deal of pain and is covered in sores like a plague victim, was intended to offer solace to the hospital’s patients by suggesting that Christ understood and shared in their afflictions. Grünewald’s astonishing and powerful work combines Gothic religious imagery with Renaissance technical advances, but its attempt to generate a passionate and transcendental state in the viewer is a product of earlier, less rational times.