Matthias Grünewald, The Crucifixion, 1511-16

The disease is called “St. Anthony’s Fire,” or more commonly known now as ergotism - a fungus one gets from ingesting rye bread causes the gruesome flesh wounds, seizures, and many other painful symptoms. That’s what’s happening to Jesus skin at the moment, it was not usually so green and well gross. The Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grünewald, was going to a monastery in Alsace, France that treated the horrific disease. Apparently if Jesus had it in the painting, it would be more bearable for the patients who were suffering and forced to look at it. Medieval thinking, what can you do?

The painting is not supposed to express Grünewald’s ideas as a painter or thoughts on life, rather teach the illiterate poor about their God and his sacrifice. The painting as a whole screams death, dying, betrayal, and sacrifice. The cross looks thrown together at the last minute, and the beams look raw and crude. Christ dies in the barren dessert with a ghoulish yellow light in the distance. The off-putting Christ is not intended to connect to the everyday viewer, but instead the patients in the monastery. A porcelain-skinned savior does no good to them while their bodies are deteriorating and dying from the outside in. Christ mirrors their pain in his own suffering on the cross, allowing them to be a step closer to God.

Little is actually known about Matthias Grünewald, only one of his contemporaries, Albert Durer actually rose to modern day fame. However, the altarpiece gives us an introspective look into his life and emotional state. The painting feels as though Grünewald has put his soul into it. He has workedto allow the viewer to not only look, but also to feel. If the viewer doesn’t react to the dying Christ reaching out for a help that never comes, well,  they aren’t looking close enough. One cannot walk away from the painting feeling a sense of happiness for the redemption that awaits them, because how can one feel redeemed when they have caused this man so much anguish? Clearly one man, Paul Hindemith, was touched so much so that he wrote an opera about Matthias Grünewald called Mathis der Maler. Clearly Hindemith is singing Grünewald’s praises, as am I.