Tag: Matthias Grünewald
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The Isenheim Altarpiece and “homeopathic” hospital art
Katrina GenuisCanada Art found in hospitals generally has the aim of comforting the viewer. Presumably, ill patients or exhausted on-call physicians who amble past pastoral countryside scenes or watercolour flowers are reminded that despite their current difficultly there is great beauty in existence. But residences for the sick have not always contained artwork that is…
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The plague of ergotism and the grace of God
Wilson EngelGilbert, Arizona, United States Perhaps the best known and least forgettable of all Renaissance art works depicting the graphic effects of disease is Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (1506–1515), now in the Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar.1 On the closed center portion of the altarpiece, is Grünewald’s famous portrayal of the Crucifixion in which the intensely human…