The Isenheim Altarpiece: God's Medicine and the Painter's Vision (Princeton Essays on the Arts) 9780691040707, 0691040702

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THE ISENHEIM ALTARPIECE

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AN DREE H A YUM The Isenheim Altarptece

GopD’s MEDICINE AND THE PAINTER’S VISION

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright © 1989 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford

All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayum, Andrée. The Isenheim altarpiece God’s medicine and the painter’s vision / Andrée Hayum. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-691-04070-2 (alk. paper) 1. Grtinewald, Matthias, 16th cent. Isenheim Altar. 2. Gritinewald, Matthias, 16th cent. —Criticism and interpretation. 3. Christian art and symbolism —Renaissance, 1450-1600—Germany. 4. Musée d’Unterlinden (Colmar, France) I. Title. N6888.G75A6s5 1990 759.3—dc19 89-30107

This book has been composed in Linotron Galliard

Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections, are not usually suitable for library rebinding Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Published with the assistance of the Getty Grant Program

For my father and

to the memory of my mother

Princeton Essays on the Arts for a complete list of books in this sertes, see page 200

CONTENTS

Preface XV Introduction 3

List of Illustrations Vill I Meaning and Function:

The Hospital Context 13

II Painting and Presence: A Catholic Monument at the

Threshold of the Reformation 53 III Fides ex auditu:

John the Baptist, Baptism, and Judgment 89

IV Afterlife of aMonument 118

Notes ISI Index 195 Vil

ILLUSTRATIONS

CoLor PLATES (after page 12) 1. Nikolaus Hagenauer, Isenheim Altarpiece, Carved Shrine. Courtesy of the Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France (photo: O. Zimmermann). 2. Matthias Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Meeting of Saints Anthony and Paul (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.). 3. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Temptation of Saint Anthony (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.).

4. Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Madonna and Child and Incarnation Tabernacle (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.).

5. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Annunciation (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.). 6. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Resurrection (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.). 7. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, closed state, Crucifixion, Lamen-

tation, Saints Sebastian and Anthony (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.).

8. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Temptation of Saint Anthony (detail) (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.).

FIGURES

1. Diagram of the three levels of the altarpiece (from G. Scheja,

The Isenheim Altarpiece, New York, 1969). 4

2. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, open state (photomontage:

O. Zimmermann, Musée d’Unterlinden). 5

3. Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, middle state (photomon-

tage: Musée d’Unterlinden). 5 Vill

ILLUSTRATIONS

terlinden). 6

4. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, closed state (Musée d’Un5. (a) Official seal of order (photo from Société scientifique du Dauplniné, 9, 1879); (b) detail of statuettes, carved shrine,

Isenheim Altarpiece. 14, 15 6. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Saint Sebastian (Art Resource/ Giraudon, N.Y.). 18 7. Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Saint Anthony (Art Resource/Giraudon, N.Y.). 19

8. Roger van der Weyden, Last Judgment Altarpiece, (a) interior; (b) exterior, 1445-1448, Beaune, Hétel-Dieu, Copyright

A.C.L. Bruxelles. 20, 21

9. Woodcut of Saint Anthony from Hans Von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney, Strassburg, 1517; facsimile ed. Darm-

stadt, 1967 (photo: Evola). 22

(photo: Fellmann). 23 (photo: Fellmann). 24

10. Griinewald, Meeting of Saints Anthony and Paul (detail) u. Griinewald, Meeting of Saints Anthony and Paul (detail)

12. Griinewald, Saint Elizabeth, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle. 25 13. Woodcut from Boethtus, De Consolatione Philosopiiae, Augs-

burg, 1537 (photo: Evola). 26

14. Plan, Isenheim monastery complex, Colmar, Archives Dé-

partementales du Haut-Rhin, H.10 1 b. 27

du Rhone, 49H699. 28

15. Ground plan, Isenheim Monastery complex, Lyons, Archives 16. Grunewald, Temptation of Saint Anthony (detail) (Art Re-

source/Giraudon, N.Y.). 29

17. Master E.S., Ars Moriendi, blockbook, British Museum, ca. 1450 (from L. Cust, The Master E.S. and the “Ars Moriend,”

Oxford, 1898) (photo: Evola). 30

18. Woodcut from Hans Von Gersdorft, Feldtbuch der Wundtartzney, Strassbourg, 1517, facsimile ed. Darmstadt, 1967

(photo: Evola). 32 1X

ILLUSTRATIONS

19. Swabian, 1440-1450, single-leaf woodcut, Saint Anthony Ab-

bot, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung. 33

Giraudon, N.Y.) 34

20. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Crucifixion (Art Resource/

raudon, N.Y.). 35

21. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, predella (Art Resource/Gi-

22. Carved Crucifix, 13304, Cologne, Sankt Maria im Kapitol (Das

Rheinische Bildarchiv K6lIn). 36

23. Tau cross, single-leaf woodcut, Alsace (?), ca. 1500, BerlinDahlem, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kup-

ferstichkabinett (photo: Anders). 38

24. Griinewald, detail of Madonna and Child and Incarnation

Tabernacle (p\. 4) (photo: Fellmann). 41

25. Grtinewald, detail of pl. 4 (photo: Fellmann). 42 26. Trismosin, Splendor Solis—Fol. 28; Harl 3469. £28. By permis-

sion of the British Library. 43

27. Enstehung eines Homunculus, etching, Basel, Schweizerisches

Pharmazie-Historisches Museum (photo: Peter Heman). 43 28. Grtinewald, detail of Madonna and Child and Incarnation

Tabernacle (photo: Fellmann). 45

29. Grtinewald, detail as above (photo: Evola). 46 30. Griinewald, detail as above (photo: Evola). 47 31. Griinewald, detail as above (photo: Fellmann). 48 32. Grunewald, detail as above (photo: Fellmann). 49 33. Isenheim Altarpiece, reconstruction drawing from H. A.

Schmid, Die Gemailde ..., 1901, pl. 8. 54

34. Martin Kriechbaum(?), Altarpiece, 1490-1498, Pfarrkirche,

Kefermarkt (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 55

35. Hans Baldung Grien, Mass and Altar, woodcut from Marcus von Lindau, Die Zehe gebot . . . , Strassburg, 1516, Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and

Tilden Foundations. 56

36. Lucas van Leyden, Solomon Adoring Idols, 1514, engraving,

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer

Bequest, 1917 (17.37.226). 58 X

ILLUSTRATIONS

37. Michael Ostendorfer, Pilgrimage to Schéne Maria of Regensburg, ca. 1520, facsimile of woodcut, The Metropolitan Mu-

seum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1925 (25.3.2(12). 59 38. Tilman Riemenschneider, Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, 1499-1505, Sankt Jakobskirche, Rothenburg (Art Resource/

Marburg, N.Y.). 61

39. Michel Erhart, High Altar, 1493-1494, Klosterkirche, Blau-

beuren (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 63

40. Michael Pacher, Altarpiece, 1471-1481, Pfarrkirche, Sankt

Wolfgang (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 64

Smith). 65

41. Hans Baldung Grien, Coronation of the Virgin, High Altar, 1512-1516, Cathedral, Freiburg im Breisgau (photo: F. M.

N.Y.). 66

42. Hans Baldung Grien, Crucifixion, High Altar, 1512-1514, Cathedral, Freiburg im Breisgau (Art Resource/Marburg,

43. Hans Baldung Grien, Christ Carried to Heaven, woodcut, ca. 1515, [he Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick

Fund, 1923 (23.35). 67

44. Grunewald, Kneeling King(?) with Angels, black chalk highlighted with white, 28.6 x 36.6 cm., Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabi-

nett (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 68

45. Grtinewald, Saint Dorothy, black chalk highlighted with white, 35.8 X 25.6. cm., Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen,

Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett. 69

(17.7.2). 71

46. Albrecht Diirer, Mass of Saint Gregory, woodcut, 1511, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1917

47. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus, woodcut, 1506, Kunstsammlungen Veste Coburg, Inv. VI, 427,298. 72

48. Albrecht Durer, Saint Eustace, ca. 1500, engraving, The Met-

ropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1919 (19.73.65). 73

(photo: Fellmann). 74

49. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, closed state (detail) Xl

ILLUSTRATIONS

50. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, middle state (detail)

(photo: F. M. Smith). 76

F, M. Smith). 77

s1. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, closed state (detail) (photo: 52. Ambrosius Holbein, Schoolmaster’s Sign, panel, 1516, Oef-

mann). | 80 fentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum, Inv. 311. 78

53. Grtinewald, Temptation of Saint Anthony (detail) (photo: Fell-

54. Griinewald, Crucifixion (detail) (photo: Fellmann). 81 55. Grtinewald, Annunciation (detail) (photo: Fellmann). 82 56. Master of Saint Giles, Mass of Saint Giles, panel, ca. 1490, The National Gallery, London, Inv. 4681. (Reproduced by cour-

tesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London.) 83 57. Lucas Cranach and workshop, Allegory of Law and Grace,

panel, 1529, Schlossmuseum, Gotha (photo: Evola). 84. 58. Albrecht Diirer, Four Apostles, panel, 1526, Munich, Bayer.

Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Inv. 545, 540. 86

Fellmann). 90

59. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Crucifixion (detail) (photo:

60. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Madonna and Child and In-

carnation Tabernacle (detail) (photo: Fellmann). 93 61. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Crucifixion (detail) (Art Re-

source/Giraudon, N.Y.). 94

62. Heidelberger Sachsenspiegel (detail), manuscript, ca. 1320,

Cod. Pal. Germ. 164, fol. 28’. 96

63. Griinewald, Saint Cyriac, panel, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut

Frankfurt (photo: U. Edelmann FFM). 99

64. Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, exterior, 1432, Ghent, Saint

Bavo, Copyright A.C.L. Bruxelles. 103

65. Grtinewald, Virgin and Child (detail), Stuppach, Bad Mer-

gentheim (photo: F. M. Smith). 108

66. Griinewald, Mocking of Christ, panel, Munich, Bayer. Staats-

gemaldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Inv. 10352. IOQ Xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

Fellmann). IIO Fellmann). 112

67. Grtinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Crucifixion (detail) (photo:

68. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, predella (detail) (photo:

69. Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Madonna and Child and In-

carnation Tabernacle (detail) (photo: Fellmann). 114 70. Grtinewald, Crucifixion, panel, Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung

Basel, Kunstmuseum, Inv. 269. 121

Inv. 107. 122

71. Arnold Bécklin, Dead Christ with the Magdalene, oi\ on canvas, 1867, Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum,

311. 123

72. Arnold Bocklin, Battle of the Centaurs, tempera on canvas, 1873, Oeffentliche Kunstsmmlung Basel, Kunstmuseum, Inv. 73. Emile Nolde, Last Supper, oil on canvas, 1909, Stiftung Sec-

ball Ada und Emil Nolde, Neukirchen (Schleswig). 126 74. Max Beckmann, Wounded Soldier, pen and ink, 1914, courtesy

of the Graphischen Sammlung der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. 128 75. Max Beckmann, Departure, oil on canvas; triptych, 1932-1935, Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given

anonymously (by exchange). 129

halle, Inv. 994. 130

76. Griinewald, Crucifixion, panel, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunst-

77. Odilon Redon, Limbo, lithograph, Iv of “Dans le Réve,” 1879, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Stickney

Collection, 1920.1559. 132

Mass. 133

78. Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, oil on canvas, ca. 1876, courtesy of the Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art Museum, Bequest-Grenville L. Winthrop), Cambridge,

79. Master of Flémalle, Madonna and Child, panel. Stadelsches

Kunstinstitut Frankfurt (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 138 80. Bartolomeo da Venezia, Portrait of a Lady, Stadelsches Kunst-

institut Frankfurt (Art Resource/Marburg, N.Y.). 139 X11

ILLUSTRATIONS

81. Pablo Picasso, Crucifixion, pen and ink, 1932, Cliché des Musées Nationaux—Paris, Musée Picasso, Inv. 1073. Copyright

ARS N.Y./SPADEM, 1989. 142

82. Pablo Picasso, Crucifixion, pen and ink, 1932, Cliché des Musées Nationaux—Paris, Musée Picasso, Inv. 1075. Copyright

ARS N.Y./SPADEM, 1989. 143

83. Henri Matisse, Study of Folded Hands, conté crayon on laid paper, 1949, courtesy of the Musée Matisse, Nice.

SUCCESSION H. MATISSE, 1989. 147

84. Jasper Johns, Untitled, encaustic and collage on canvas with

objects, 1983, Jasper Johns/VAGA New York 1988. 150

X1V

PREFACE

Te fascination and demands of this project have kept the author in its orbit for more years than she is willing to admit. The many debts incurred in the process can easily be acknowledged, however. On the institutional level, I must thank my own university, Fordham, for twice granting me faculty fellowships along with several faculty research grants and for extending leaves of absence while I took advantage of financial assistance from outside foundations: two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the Fulbright Program of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. I am most grateful to these institutions as I am to the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ingram Merril! Foundation, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their support. My research has taken me to many libraries and archives both here and abroad. The New York Public Library, already a haven for me during my college years, became the home base for all my research as a scholar. The staff—in particular, of the Division of Art and Architecture, Prints and Photographs, and Rare Books and Manuscripts—has invariably put itself at my disposal. I have benefited from the collections of the library of the Institute of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art—whose Department of Prints and Photographs has also been 1m-

portant—the Frick Collection, and Columbia University’s Avery Library. Special thanks are due to the staff of the Rare Books Room at the New York Academy of Medicine library, a setting that became indispensable for this work. The Isenheim Altarpiece has received voluminous modern critical treatment, but it also quickly compelled me to step outside the realm of the literature on art and consequently had me moving in Europe between a specialized treasury like the Zentralinstitut fir Kunstgeschichte in Munich and the vast resources of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris. Furthermore, as Alsace 1s a region traditionally committed to charting its own habits and history, studying one of its monuments meant being audience to a literature that was best absorbed on its native terrain. Thus memorable days were spent at Strasbourg’s Bibliothe¢que Nationale et Universitaire and at Colmar’s Bibliothéque de la Ville, whose director, Xv

PREFACE

Francis Gueth, deserves my thanks. The Archives du Haut-Rhin in Colmar are rich in their holdings and meticulous in their arrangement, a reflection of the virtues of their director, Christian Wilsdorf, who was unfailingly helpful to me. And then there 1s the Musée d’Unterlinden itself. In the early days of my visits, its former curator, Pierre Schmitt, patiently indulged my questions; the late Charles Fellmann facilitated my access to Grtinewald’s great altarpiece and generously provided me with many of his own photographs of the monument. More recently, | have been fortunate in the colleagueship and camaraderie of the museum’s energetic director, Christian Heck. For their attentiveness to and encouragement of this work at its earliest stages, I am particularly grateful to Rosalind Krauss, as well as to Marilyn Lavin, Nan Rosenthal, and the late H. W. Janson. My colleague at Fordham, Elizabeth C. Parker, ably held the fort while I was off doing research and always lent an informed and sympathetic ear to its progress. James Ackerman and Sydney Freedberg, splendid teachers of Italian Renaissance art and culture, have been the most gracious advocates of the geographic and temporal changes of direction my work has taken, all the time holding the doors open for my reentries into the Italian fold. In the same breath, I must thank three excellent scholars of German art for welcoming me to new territories; they have proffered advice on specific points and displayed generous interest: Christiane Andersson, Alan Shestack, and Charles Talbot. These thanks I also extend to my fellow sojourner north and south of the Alps, Colin Eisler. Over time, the opportunity to air different sections of this research in public, thanks to the kind invitation of colleagues, was extremely useful

| in advancing and sharpening my ideas. This included lectures at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, University of British Columbia, University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, Yale University, Columbia University, Un1versity of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In such a context, a well-timed query, perhaps long forgotten by the questioner, left me readier to pursue a particular detail or issue that I had theretofore treated only perfunctorily. I think especially of Natalie Zemon Davis, Amy Johnson, H. Marshall Leicester, Jr., J. Patrice Marandel, Nan Rosenthal, and Richard Saez.

In turn, a suggestion by Svetlana Alpers caused me to focus on reactions to Grtinewald’s altarpiece in modern times. A short segment of XV1

PREFACE

Chapter IV, in which I began to evaluate this subject, was published as “Griinewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece, and the Politics of Culture,” an offering in Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip, New York, 1985. Barbara Lane, as an editor of that volume, and for other constructive professional assistance and advice, has my appreciation. My friend Dr. Qais Al-Awaati, with his grasp of intellectual history and his place at the crossroads of the scientific and clinical enterprises, became an ideal sounding board and informant for my thoughts about the original medical aspects of the altarpiece in the first chapter, a previous version of which appeared in the Art Bulletin in December 1977. Once the manuscript took shape, it was to benefit from critical readings by Constance Jordan and Linda Seidel. Amy Edith Johnson gave it the polish that only her editorial skills can effect. At the end, Doris Bergman _ assisted in correcting the proofs with her able scrutiny. In the interim, Mark Anderson gamely consented to survey the German citations and quotations, as did my colleagues Eva Stadler, for the French, and George Shea, for the Latin, thereby saving me from embarrassing errors of transcription. At the publisher’s suggestion, I have presented foreignlanguage material in English, using existing translations when possible.

Where not otherwise indicated, translations into English are mine. Comments by Paul Hirsch occasionally sharpened my German comprehension; Eva Stadler and George Shea provided fine points of French and Latin. The latter advised me especially in my translation of the passage from a Latin sermon of the period in the third chapter, for which expert guidance I also thank Fred J. Nichols; Frederick Goldin sagely improved upon my rendering of comparable sections of German sermons. For her advice in the case of Greek etymology, along with relevant references to thematic sources and bibliography concerning the ancient world, I want to thank Laura Slatkin. Beyond acknowledging such products of a vast storehouse of erudition, I owe to her the necessary encouragement to proceed with the final phases of completing this manuscript. Her responsiveness to the ideas, her infallible judgment in matters of structure, style, and sequence of expository language, her understanding and affection, alone made that possible. The last tribute is reserved for Griinewald’s altarpiece. As artists and writers before me have attested, this monument, once noticed, becomes an active presence in one’s life. The attraction began for me as an act of liberation—after dutiful completion of a suitable dissertation. A new

and formidable companion, the Isenheim Altarpiece has seen me XV

PREFACE

through professional maturation, always instigating, challenging, and responding to my evolving intellectual, aesthetic, and historical interests. It was also a touchstone in times of dramatic social and political change. But more sharply etched reminders of my journey are the personal markers of changing and sustained relations: friendships, loves, inevitable losses. All of these are encoded here.

XVI

THE ISENHEIM ALTARPIECE

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INTRODUCTION

“As for the altarpiece, it seems necessary to put it back as an ensemble, for this alone conveys its full beauty; otherwise

one would be transmitting to posterity mere fragments which, taken and considered in isolation, serve no purpose and lend themselves to nothing other than the history of a mutilated work.”

n 1794, having escaped destruction and removal during the icono-

| ee controversy of the Reformation, the Isenheim Altarpiece was put in storage in the Colmar library to save it from the ravages of vandalism that were a by-product of the French Revolution. At that time the official commissaries, whose task was to report on works of art in the region of Alsace, appealed for continued access to this altarpiece, emphasizing their admiration of it and especially urging eventual restoration to its original framework and placement. Their words still resonate for us and illuminate the course of the present study. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was first installed in the Musée d’Unterlinden in Colmar, the Isenheim Altarpiece has been exhibited in a dismantled state.? To be sure, the modern mode of installation, together with the gradual perfecting of techniques of photographic reproduction, has allowed us to study the panels with unprecedented ease and intensity, but these very tools of our research have militated against a perception of the work as a functioning totality within a living context. The organic existence of the altarpiece, as the commissaries suggested, has been forever ruptured. Recovering the altarpiece, reconstructing it imaginatively, returning it to its original context, has necessarily meant integrating a number of ways of secing. One of these explores the possibility of hierarchies of significance inscribed onto the layout of the single pictorial field. At the same time, guided by an awareness of the original arrangement of the Isenheim panels, which we know from a firsthand description of the altarpiece while it was still in situ, I have proposed in earlier studies that any coherent interpretation must go beyond the subject matter of the separate sections of the altarpiece (Figs. 1-4), that is, must consider it 3

The Shrine

Meeting of Saint Temptation of

Anthony with Paul Augustine Saint Jerome Anthony

Christ and the Twelve Apostles

-The Middle Position

The Closed Position

Saint

Sebastian Crucifixion

FIGURE I. Diagram of the three levels of the altarpiece.

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PLATE 3.

Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Temptation of Saint Anthony.

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(center) Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Madonna and Child and Incarnation Tabernacle. PLATE §.

(left) Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Annunciation. PLATE 6.

(right) Griinewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, Resurrection.

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I MEANING AND FUNCTION: THE HOSPITAL CONTEXT

he contemporary viewer of art is in many ways a sophisticated crea-

Tine Museum exhibition, textbook presentation, and modern

means of communication have brought the art of far-ranging times and places into the orbit of the familiar. These same phenomena, as well as the proliferating of reproductions of works of art, have transmitted the patterns, distinctions, and evolution of artistic styles—lessons that, in the not so distant past, were the privileged lifetime’s experience of few. Even a hierarchy of values, formerly the subject of rarefied philosophical debate, is implied by exhibition and publication practices, and concretized for the public in the well-advertised transactions of that network of collectors, galleries, and auction houses that structure the burgeoning market for art. Still, as though in resistance to such artificial, if intensive, exposure, mystery and mystique surround many of the monuments of art history, with the result that this same public may frequently be shocked by the vicissitudes in the world of art or by the working methods of artists in the premodern period. How to comprehend a Vasari, for instance, who secured the renown of Masaccio’s fresco of The Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, by celebrating it in his Lives of the Artists, only to hide it from future generations when, as a painter, he fulfilled a commission for an altarpiece that stood in front of this very fresco? Less shocking but equally unexpected is the realization that some of the acknowledged masterpieces of Renaissance art—Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling among them—were not self-sufficient works but were designed to complement or merely complete a preexisting decorative project. Thus, at Isenheim, Grtinewald’s panels were made both to cover and reveal an already existing sculptured shrine. Its tripartite framing structure encloses a majestic, enthroned, central figure of Saint Anthony Abbot, patron of the monastery, flanked by Saints Augustine and Jerome (Pl. 1). These large gilded and polychromed statues were elevated from 13

CHAPTER I

Lo Fig.2.

Fig 4.

ys # a em A res “SN ft fis \ Oe iaats SEN ii Vey \\ Yo OSU TNS ian

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FIGURE 5(a). Official seal of order (photo from Société scientifique du Daupliné, 9, 1879).

the altar by a supporting base, or predella, that contains half-length figures of Christ surrounded by his disciples. Thus we must, first of all, pause and contemplate the significance of the shrine. This carved wooden complex takes us back to the early era of the shap-

ing of Christianity as an official system of belief, with its apostolic origins in the disputa-like predella, its theological elaboration in the standing church fathers, Augustine and Jerome, and its central place of honor devoted to Saint Anthony—that much sought-after reflection of the divine spirit on earth and exemplary holy man of late antiquity. It is he who exemplifies the charisma and Christ-like powers, first recorded by the Greek bishop Athanasius in his account of the life of this saint, with its emphasis on discipline and renunciation, struggles against evil and temptation, and miraculous acts of curing and revivification.! Anthony’s choice of a life of contemplation and prayer in the desert wilderness and his influence on growing communities of hermits are also pertinent to our subject; these had long established him as founder of the institution of monasticism. In 1095 an order was dedicated especially to his patronage at SaintAntoine-en-Viennois, near Lyons, and devotion to this saint had inten14

*2|.|:|: THE HOSPITAL CONT I TT /-CONTEX

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A CATHOLIC MONUMENT

actions motivated by Protestant iconoclasm. But the history of Catholicism itself sustained a recurring resistance to the worship of images, which derived from the Old Testament prohibition in the Second Commandment."° Increasing doubt about the spiritual wholesomeness of the

image and possible dangers inherent in the content and effects of devotional objects marked the period immediately preceding the Isenheim Altarpiece and makes the mere existence at this date of a visual complex as monumental and striking as this altarpiece all the more remarkable. A Hussite text as early as 1418 1s revealing in its admonitory prescriptions:

Church images can be kept in the church, but only if they are not in superfluity and not wantonly or falsely adorned, in such a way as to seduce the eyes of the communicants from respect for the Lord’s body, or as to distract the mind or otherwise be an impediment. Moreover they cannot be given adoration or cult in any way, by sacrifice of candles, or kneeling, or other forms of cult that rather belong to the Divine Body. But they may be cultivated only for their bare signification of deeds done in Christ or by Christ, that

the simple people may be able more readily to see such deeds through the images and thus be furthered in their devotion." If, from about 1500 and shortly after, prints with such subjects as Solomon’s Idolatry or the Israelites Worshiping the Golden Calf were used to caution a Christian audience through what were perceived as classic instances of excessive veneration of material objects (Fig. 36), later evidence reveals how the tensions and apprehensions surrounding image worship were at times justified.” A woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer (Fig. 37), dating to five years after the Isenheim Altarpiece, depicts a throng of pilgrims approaching a statue of the Madonna that had been erected to celebrate a miracle alleged to have occurred at this site.3 Such cultic fervor combined with commercial exploitation to contribute to the vehemence of subsequent statements against images, such as the following one by a group of Strasbourg citizens: It also troubles us, since no scriptures say it 1s right, that there 1s that evil idol in the choir of the cathedral, which is not only a blasphemous offence to many of our people in the city, but to all people in the whole region. For every day one sees people kneeling before it, and praying to it, while these same people obstinately refuse to $7

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r a os vou! E ie | — BB, Bowal

CHAPTER II

ing material for the historical survey, in its favored separation of mediums, avoids this kind of consideration. But it is appropriate historically to contemplate the ambitions of this work and its impact in terms of a

visual culture confining itself increasingly to the page: to drawings, printed illustrations, and the printed word itself. Indeed, at a time that saw the proliferation of all kinds of illustrative materials through the reproductive processes of woodcut and engraving, Grtinewald seems determined to reclaim presence through the condition of uniqueness 1n-

herent in the painted image. This is so much the case that even now, when photographs have made works of art from disparate periods and places comfortably familiar and when photography has refined the process of reproduction to the point, at times, of defying the assumed 1mperative of studying the original, seeing Griinewald’s panels jolts us with the immediate experience of the singular. At a moment when the ceremony of the Mass and communal participation in the celebration of the Eucharist were being called into question, and the doctrine of transubstantiation and its intimate association with the place of the altar challenged, prints and paintings favoring such subjects as the Mass of Saint Gregory, with its miraculous appearance of Christ, show us just how compelling the notion of a corporeal transfor-

mation at the altar could be (Fig. 46).7° In the Isenheim Altarpiece, Griinewald seems to posit the unique and irreproduceable object as a perceptual equivalent of the presence to be witnessed by the worshiper at the Mass—the notion central to Catholic doctrine and ritual. The Isenheim Altarpiece does contain specific references to the eucharistic rite, such as the chalice on the ground line of the closed state which receives the blood spurting from the lamb’s wound (Fig. 47). By and large, however, such references are evoked through painterly metaphors rather than strictly liturgical motifs. In the closed state, for in-

stance, variations on the color red stand out against the dark background (PI. 7). In conjunction with the subjects of the Crucifixion and the Lamentation, the use of red 1s an obvious way of conjuring up the blood of Christ for the celebration of the Eucharist. Moreover, Christ’s livid, sore-covered flesh in the Crucifixion and the Lamentation is a choice that would have provided the special audience of the hospital with a strikingly relevant physical image through which to perceive the process of transubstantiation. How different in this respect 1s this northern work, under the auspices of a provincial monastery, from the major Roman commissions of the time. Raphael’s Vatican fresco of about five 70

ry ‘ IUM ) OLIC an — ee se ee SO eeoC ~s ere ee ee io. Geet 8 ee. eT Le ES ee — . Oe eee: oe? : es Ce ee te ey ee ee SS . Mi = RS ea pe SIN fe OE Sain Bee eC Pin : energie ne : SRO SDS ACS poeta eee SE

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PFs apt q , | ; : J & : , | => of ey . : e&

bration of th “ ;charist @ “ - sa * : it] | e ass; these are pictur l yteuch: 1. aes . ; es that display rath > MI | y eucharistic politic atner ; , eethan se - elciti se oe. a7 a‘ant i - fo ng the experience of tra Hation | ma ) nsubstantiation itse | 1 inds of printed incorporated mat priio LS. N/ la run ALC : V 7 - 5ofAR

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ns Se Se) : Joe |) Se er ceieee eeeae| ee CHAPTER II

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ch,eth eee eeaw ae Ber gt |ney S\N tyhee a a SA) oN F AR eee Peet ER oe a OO eat SDS Dae We foot, “+ fi in “ . the “ | ah C ¢ " + al ,scene, a oe osoverlaps oe ery geand, l s 7d -ffe than Crucifixion in ‘effect, 73

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me 4 CHAPTER II

* 7 mong ° % omy *vs«' ® ~—y “ e oe @ *

hind leg ta of the Fi ? Wi CQuivalent at better equivalelTOr becomes mes the tine tne . t lamb : TCCY

his place as Wary intermediary between 1’ting§ point | ) ACC aS LCCTI DeCTWCCI WiIStT ana ManCl thanan the ,snl my ~ : S ™ ne 7 . gy a = ° yo ; . * ofiv view to see group around ecati ru.Griinewald Id uses,uses, 1s causing to seeusthe grthearound the the Virgin

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Slightly trom above Mrist Su tly trom oeciow, anc John the Baptist * i 7on gy(rig. F(Fi 20): aight on 0)? straight YerEparts of The the altarpiece thee artist ; oT