The altarpiece, which draws around , visitors each year to Colmar, will remain on view in the church at the Unterlinden Museum during the restoration work. Isenheim Altarpiece restoration finally back on track after public outcry. More than 30 conservators will treat paintings and sculptures, seven years after French culture ministry halted reckless cleaning of two panels.
Vincent Noce. At the Isenheim hospital, the Antonine monks devoted themselves to the care of sick and dying peasants, many of them suffering from the effects of ergotism, a disease caused by consuming rye grain infected with fungus.
Ergotism, popularly known as St. Sculpted wooden altars were popular in Germany at the time. Anthony flanked by standing figures of St. Jerome and St. Below, in the carved predella, usually covered by a painted panel, a carved Christ stands at the center of seated apostles, six to each side, grouped in separate groups of three.
The painted panels fold out to reveal three distinct ensembles. In its common, closed position the central panels close to depict a horrific, night-time Crucifixion. The set of panel paintings known as The Isenheim Altarpiece was commissioned by the preceptor Guido Guersi for the main altar of the Antonite Monastery near Colmar. The monastery specialized in the care of plague sufferers as well as the treatment of skin diseases like ergotism St Anthony's fire - an intensely painful burning sensation in the arms and legs, caused by eating cereals contaminated by ergot.
This accounts for the presence in the painting of both St Sebastian patron saint of plague victims and St Anthony Abbot the patron saint of the hospital's order , as well as the ravaged body of the crucified Christ. The latter image, deliberately pitted with plague-type sores, was designed to provide solace to hospital patients by showing that Jesus understood and shared their painful afflictions. The Isenheim Altarpiece has a fairly complex construction.
It is an old sculpted altar, made by Niklaus Hagenauer and consisting of three carved wood statues of saints, to which six wings painted by Grunewald have been attached - three on each side. Four of these wings are hinged and painted on both sides; the other two are static and painted on one side only. All this allows you to change the displayed image according to the day.
While the Crucifixion is sombre though livid, the other panels are marked by Grunewald's vivid Renaissance colour palette , as well as his extraordinary devil-imagery. The Isenheim Altarpiece Crucifixion In this monumental work of Biblical art , Grunewald's dark and harrowing portrayal of the Crucifixion shows a horribly wounded, twisted Christ, nailed to the cross. As one critic describes it: it is the most beautiful painting of ugliness in the history of art.
Christ's flesh bristles with jagged splinters, as well as the developing sepsis and necrosis. It's another, even more confessional image of creeping madness: the terror at the window, the cracking of the glass by Something. And then there is the scariest scene of all, that same resurrection. This Christ is not human after all, and his return from death is not consoling.
It is a shattering fact that changes human history and sends the soldiers guarding the tomb falling over their armour, sprawling in fear. He painted his altarpiece on the eve of the Reformation, and in it you see a man thinking about religious images with the same intensity Martin Luther brought to the Bible; there is something convulsive here, at the start of more that a century of religious war.
Faith is not easy, in this vision: it is violent and extreme. Otto Dix and George Grosz explicitly echo the twisting fingers and diseased body of his Christ in their paintings of disfigured first world war veterans.
The bird-monster who beats St Anthony with a stick inspired the bird-demons of the surrealist Max Ernst. Even Picasso painted a series of homages to it. And yet the reason this masterpiece looks so modern is precisely that it is so deeply religious. In doing so, he creates a work of art that shakes you to your very being - even, or especially, if you believe in nothing.
Details: 00 33 3 89 20 15 50 or musee-unterlinden. This masterpiece of European art would probably be more famous if we knew more about its creator. People like a work of art with a good story attached, such as Michelangelo and his struggle to complete the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He made paintings for churches in western Germany, and died in One hint of his personality is that he seems to have specialised in crucifixions.
Another can be found in his charcoal drawings, which suggest a man introspectively involved in his work.
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