Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Wilson F. Engel

  • Two feasts of celebration: Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party

    Wilson F. Engel, IIIGilbert, Arizona, USA The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s now-famous mixed-media installation in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, was an intentionally shocking feminist statement in the late 1970s. Chicago’s work was anticipated in important respects in an unorthodox altarpiece The Garden of Earthly…

  • 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…