Why read The Isenheim Altarpiece?

Book cover of The Isenheim Altarpiece: God's Medicine and the Painter's Vision

Book description

Andree Hayum approaches Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, now at the Musee d'Unterlinden in Colmar, as a structural and iconographic entity and restores it to its broader cultural context in the early sixteenth century. She interprets the altarpiece in terms of its hospital context, then explores how this polyptych functions as…

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Topics

Germany

Genres

History

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Isenheim Altarpiece as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mark William Roche

Author

I was overwhelmed as I stood before Grünewald’s 16th-century Crucifixion in Colburg, France. At almost nine feet tall, the powerful Crucifixion was at the time the largest ever painted in Europe.

Blood flows from Christ’s side and head, which hangs low into the breast. Some of the thorns have broken off and are projected into the flesh, which is marked with pustules, sores, and lesions. The wounds are visible, the ribs protrude, and the skin and lip colors evoke death. The nails have become instruments of torture.

Hayum’s comprehensive historical investigations underscore the healing mission of Grünewald’s Crucifixion: ugliness…

From Mark's list on Books that examine beauty and ugliness.