Supreme art is
a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth,
passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,
but never abandoned.
William Butler Yeats
Plagued to Death
Consolation in suffering
Appear to me as my shield, my consolation in the hour of my death. And
let me see thine image in thy sufferings on the cross. I will look up to
thee, full of faith will I press thee fast to my heart: who thus dies,
dies well.
Paul Gerhardt, 1656, after the Salve caput cruentatum of Arnulf
of Louvain, before 1250
Death is all around:
A ward m a hospital in the Middle Ages, 1514
Fear of "hellfire": A doctor wears
protective clothing to ward off the plague,
1725
With the deep-cleft valleys
of the Vosges Mountains, and the idyllic
market towns which dot the eastern slopes with their charming
half-timbered houses, Alsace-Lorraine is renowned for its quaint,
picturesque scenery. Yet death haunted medieval isenheim, on what is now
the Wine Route between Colmar and Guebwdler. Dedicated to caring for the
sick, the monastery of St Anthony — whose name derived from the patron
saint of lepers — maintained a hospice. In the Middle Ages lepers were
spoken of as being branded by "hellfire" or the "burning disease". All
they could do was await death, which gradually but inevitably devoured
them. Fear of contagion made them outcasts in society. They were also
regarded as sinners who were being punished for mortal sins by being
afflicted with leprosy. Only the devoted care of committed monks and nuns
relieved their suffering.
Monks and nuns cared even more for the
souls in the disintegrating bodies of their patients. Communal prayer was
the high point of weekdays in the hospice. In the Isenheim hospice, monks,
nuns and their patients prayed together before the Crucifixionpainted by
Matthias Grunewald,
a native of Wurzburg. The Abbot, Guido Guersi, had commissioned this work
to adorn the central panel of a hinged altarpiece on view during the week
in the hospice church. The visionary expressive power of
Grunewald's
sublime Crucifixion, his masterpiece, reveals the painter as
one of the greatest of that or any age. Emperor Rudolf II desperately
wanted to acquire the painting for his collection. The Prince Electors of
Brandenburg and Bavaria also made attractive offers for it to enhance
their collections. Nonetheless, for the time being, the luminous
GrunewaldCrucifixionremained in the setting for which it had been
created: the church of the Isenheim lepers' hospice. Here it consoled
those who could identify with what it portrayed. In Christ's martyred body
as
Grunewald
had painted it, the lepers in the Isenheim hospice could find a personal
relationship to their Lord. Not until the Isenheim monastery was disbanded
in the secularisation that followed the French Revolution was the Colmar
Crucifixionfinally moved — to a museum.
Matthias Grunewald
(1480-1529) The Crucifixion
c. 1515
Oil on wood, 269 x 307 cm
Musee d'Unterlinden, Colmar
