Inside Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece
The Isenheim Altarpiece is the masterpiece of Matthias Grunewald, one of the most powerful and disturbing works of the Northern Renaissance. Painted around 1512 to 1516, with carved figures by the sculptor Niclaus of Haguenau, it is a transforming altarpiece whose wings open to show three completely different views. It is kept today in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, in eastern France. Its medium is oil on panel, around a carved wooden shrine.
Closed, the altarpiece shows one of the most harrowing images in all of art, a Crucifixion in which the body of Christ hangs torn, green, and covered in sores. This was no accident. The altarpiece was made for a hospital, and its broken Christ was meant to be seen by the sick and the dying.
Yet the same altarpiece also holds scenes of overwhelming joy and light. When its wings are opened, the darkness gives way to the Nativity and to a Resurrection so radiant it seems to dissolve into pure color. Few works move so far between despair and hope. Readers who want to know more about the artist can also read our article on Matthias Grunewald’s paintings.
The History of the Isenheim Altarpiece
The Isenheim Altarpiece was made for the church of the Monastery of Saint Anthony at Isenheim, near Colmar. The monks there ran a hospital that cared for people suffering from skin diseases and from a terrible illness known as Saint Anthony’s fire, caused by a fungus in rye and marked by burning pain, gangrene, and convulsions.
The altarpiece was built to change with the seasons of the Church. Its hinged wings could be folded into three different arrangements, each shown at different times of the year. Patients were brought before it as part of their care, so that the images themselves became a kind of medicine for the soul.
The Closed Altarpiece: The Crucifixion
For most of the year the altarpiece stayed closed, showing the Crucifixion. Christ hangs heavily on a rough cross, his fingers twisted in agony, his head fallen. On the left the Virgin faints into the arms of John the Evangelist while Mary Magdalene kneels in grief. On the right stands John the Baptist, pointing to Christ beside the words, He must increase, but I must decrease, with the Lamb of God bleeding into a chalice at his feet.
Flanking the central scene stand Saint Sebastian, a protector against plague, and Saint Anthony, patron of the hospital. The whole closed view is dark and still, built around suffering, exactly the suffering the patients knew in their own bodies.
A Body Marked by Disease
What makes Grunewald’s Crucifixion so unforgettable is its honesty. The skin of Christ is greenish and torn, studded with thorns and sores, his flesh stretched and broken. Grunewald painted the wounds of Christ to look like the wounds of the people who would pray before the image.
For a patient dying of Saint Anthony’s fire, this was a Christ who shared their disease. The altarpiece told them that God himself had entered into their pain, and that their suffering was joined to his. No earlier painter had dared to show the crucified body with such terrible truth.
The Lamentation
Below the Crucifixion runs a narrow predella showing the Lamentation, the moment after Christ is taken down from the cross. His body, still marked by its wounds, is laid out before burial, mourned by the Virgin and the others.
The predella was hinged in the middle, so that opening it gave the unsettling impression of the dead Christ being parted at the waist. It is a quiet, grave scene, the last note of the closed altarpiece before its wings open onto light.
The First Opening: Joy and Light
On feast days the outer wings were opened, and the mood changed completely. The first opening shows three radiant scenes, the Annunciation on the left, a great vision of angels and the Nativity in the center, and the Resurrection on the right. Color floods back, and the suffering of the closed view gives way to celebration.
This sudden movement from darkness to brilliance was the heart of the altarpiece’s message. The same Christ who hung diseased on the cross is shown newborn, adored, and risen in glory. For the sick of Isenheim, the open wings were a promise of healing and of life beyond their pain.
The Angel Concert and the Nativity
At the center of the first opening, a host of angels makes music within a strange, glowing tabernacle, while nearby the Virgin tenderly holds her newborn son. The Angel Concert is one of the most inventive passages in all of Renaissance art, full of shimmering light and odd, feathered angels.
Beside it the Nativity shows Mary cradling the Christ child in a wide landscape, with a distant golden vision of God the Father above. Tenderness and wonder replace the horror of the closed view, and the gentle humanity of mother and child offers comfort of a very different kind.
The Resurrection
On the right wing of the first opening, Grunewald painted his most astonishing image, the Resurrection. Christ rises from the tomb wrapped in a swirling shroud that turns from red to gold to white, his body whole and healed, his face dissolving into a vast halo of light. The soldiers below are thrown back, blinded.
For the patients of the hospital, this was the answer to the diseased Christ of the closed view. The same wounds that had been raw and bleeding now shine like jewels. The Resurrection promised that the sick body could be remade, glorious and free of pain.
The Second Opening: Saint Anthony
A second opening revealed the innermost view, built around a carved and gilded shrine by Niclaus of Haguenau, with Saint Anthony enthroned among other saints. Grunewald’s painted wings on either side tell the story of the hospital’s patron, the Temptation of Saint Anthony and his meeting with Saint Paul the Hermit.
In the Temptation, Saint Anthony is attacked by a swarm of grotesque demons, and in the lower corner sits a figure swollen and rotting with disease, almost certainly a portrait of Saint Anthony’s fire itself. Once more the altarpiece speaks directly to the sick, showing a saint who endured monstrous suffering and was not destroyed by it.
Healing in Paint
The Isenheim Altarpiece is unlike any other great work of its age. Where Italian painters sought ideal beauty, Grunewald sought truth, even when that truth was terrible. He made an altarpiece that did not hide from disease and death, but met them head on, and then answered them with light.
It is also a work made for a purpose. Every panel was designed to be seen by people in pain, to tell them that their suffering had meaning and that healing was possible. Few paintings have ever been put to so direct and so human a use.
Conclusion
The Isenheim Altarpiece moves from the darkest image in Christian art to one of its most blazing visions of hope. Closed, it shows a Christ who shares every wound of the dying. Opened, it shows the Nativity and a Resurrection that promise an end to all suffering.
Five centuries later it still overwhelms visitors in Colmar. Grunewald made a work of mercy as much as of art, a painted gospel for the sick that has lost none of its power to move.
Artwork Information
| Artwork | Artist | Date | Medium | Current Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Isenheim Altarpiece | Matthias Grunewald (carved figures by Niclaus of Haguenau) | c. 1512 to 1516 | Oil on panel, with a carved wooden shrine | Unterlinden Museum, Colmar |
Five Facts About the Isenheim Altarpiece
- The Isenheim Altarpiece was painted by Matthias Grunewald around 1512 to 1516, with carved figures by Niclaus of Haguenau.
- It is a transforming polyptych whose hinged wings open into three different views.
- It was made for the hospital of the Monastery of Saint Anthony at Isenheim, which treated skin diseases and ergotism, known as Saint Anthony’s fire.
- Closed, it shows a harrowing Crucifixion with Christ’s body covered in sores, echoing the patients’ own suffering.
- It is now in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, France.
FAQ
What is special about the Isenheim Altarpiece?
It is a transforming altarpiece whose wings open into three different views, moving from a harrowing Crucifixion to a radiant Resurrection. It was made for a hospital, and its diseased Christ was meant to comfort the sick and the dying.
Why was the Isenheim Altarpiece made?
It was made for the church of a monastery hospital at Isenheim that cared for victims of skin disease and Saint Anthony’s fire. The images were part of the patients’ care, offering them spiritual comfort and hope of healing.
Where is the Isenheim Altarpiece now?
It is in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, in the Alsace region of eastern France.
What was the original location of the Isenheim Altarpiece?
It was made for the church of the Monastery of Saint Anthony at Isenheim, a village near Colmar, which gives the altarpiece its name.
Who painted the Isenheim Altarpiece?
The paintings are by Matthias Grunewald. The carved and gilded figures of the inner shrine are by the sculptor Niclaus of Haguenau.
Why is the Crucifixion so gruesome?
Grunewald painted Christ’s body torn and covered in sores so that the suffering Christ would resemble the diseased patients who prayed before it. It told them that God shared their pain.
What is Saint Anthony’s fire?
It is an old name for ergotism, a painful illness caused by a fungus in rye, marked by burning pain, gangrene, and convulsions. The hospital at Isenheim was devoted to its sufferers.
Where can I buy a print of Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece?
You can buy a print of Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece at jesuschrist.pictures: see the canvas reproduction in our shop, printed on museum-grade canvas and available in several sizes.
