The Crucifixion: Isenheim Altarpiece

The painting forms part of Grünewald’s largest and most significant commission: the famed Isenheim Altarpiece. Grünewald’s principal source for Christ’s intensely mangled and damaged body was the fourteenth century Revelations by St Bridget. While it was common to dramatize the agony and torment of Christ’s passion in German devotional art of the late Middle Ages, Grünewald’s picture of Christ is unsurpassed in its unflinching depiction of suffering and pain. This painting portrays the agony of Christ with a penetrating forcefulness seen neither before nor since.

The altarpiece was commissioned by the Antonite Order for the hospital at their monastery in Isenheim, Alsace. The hospital primarily treated skin diseases, including St Anthony’s Fire (what is today known as ergotism). The patients of the hospital would likely have identified with Christ’s torment and pain, and the hospital staff would have been encouraged to treat their patients as they would Christ. The painting also offers the hope of salvation after suffering; a comforting thought in a hospital setting. It suggests that true healing will come from Christ and faith in his sacrifice. Sombre, dramatic, and affecting, the Altarpiece is Grünewald’s uncontested masterpiece.

This painting’s composition is dominated by the body of Christ hanging from a crucifix placed unusually close to the ground. His body is taut and entirely covered in lacerations and blistering spots of pox (some containing small thorns). His fingers are extended in agony. His feet, which are nailed to a projection on the crucifix, are horrifically distorted. He is the epitome of physical suffering, and he looks to have died on the cross. The left side of the painting features three mourning figures: a kneeling Mary Magdalene, and a swooning Virgin Mary supported by St John the Evangelist. Mary Magdalene’s hands are clasped in an ardent gesture of desperation and distress. On the right, the figure of St John the Baptist points calmly towards the body of Christ and holds a Bible. A red inscription reads: “he must increase, but I must decrease”. St. John the Baptist is accompanied by a lamb with a cross that is bleeding from a wound in his chest; the lamb both an attribute the Baptist and a recognised Eucharistic symbol of Christ and his passion. 

This Oil on wood is in the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, France