The Devil at Isenheim:
Cunningham, Lawrence S
GRUNEWALD'S MASTERPIECE THE DEVIL AT ISENHEIM Reflections of Popular Belief in Griinewald's Altarpiece Ruth Mellinkoff University of California, $29.95, 109 pp. Lawrence S. Cunningham The great...
...The first volume in that series is The Devil at Isenheim...
...One cannot look at the weight of Christ bending down the crossbar of the crucifix without thinking of the vivid meditations on the Passion that run from the contemporary Devotio Moderna and the fourteenth-century Rhineland mystics (Tauler and Suso) back to the ecstatic experiences of Francis of Assisi on Mount LaVerna...
...Mellinkoff sees that Griinewald links the appurtenances of Christ's birth with his subsequent Passion: the swaddling clothes with the seamless garment...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham The great polyptych painted by Mathias Griinewald between 1512 and 1516 is one of the few artistic works of Western culture that can be called a masterpiece in the fullest sense of the term...
...The precise relationship of all of the scenes is the subject of much scholarly discussion as is the iconography of the particular figures...
...Griinewald (unlike his German compatriot, Diirer) had not been touched by the Renaissance tradition coming from Italy...
...The central panel is flanked on the left by a depiction of the Annunciation, on the right by the famous Resurrection, with a deposition of Christ on the predella below...
...In the North, especially, the artists of the Renaissance filled their paintings with symbolic details, each of which had its own set of compressed meanings, with the totality standing for a coherent theme...
...Yet there are fourteen other scenes plus a "shrine" of carved figures visible to the viewer when the altarpiece is in its so-called "third position...
...Griinewald's alterpiece is a complex one...
...She "unpacks" the poly-symbolic significance of Lucifer and his angels, who are at the rear of the angelic concert, showing how the demonic apparel of peacock feathers had a long history in popular art, with its twin allusion about the pride of Lucifer and proverbial pride of the peacock...
...the visionary writings of St...
...At the head of Mellinkoff's volume is a series of detailed studies of some aspects of the scene of Christ's nativity and the angelic chorus...
...the German expressionistpainter, Emil Nolde, in the early part of this century, painted a slashing copy of it with great swoops of vivid colors...
...Be that as it may, studies like this show us in compelling detail that theology and theological formulations are not confined to the bloodless tomes of the schools...
...He made no attempt to refine the science of perspective nor did he evince an interest in the anatomical and/or spatial rigor of, say, a Leonardo or a Raphael...
...This book demonstrates, at a very focused level, some truths about religious iconography demonstrated in this century by pioneering scholars like Irwin Pan-ofsky and Meyer Shapiro...
...The University of California Press has recently begun a "Discovery Series" on the history of art which, according to its brochure description, will consist of lavishly illustrated books with roughly one hundred pages of text focusing on some particularity in the field of art history...
...The chamber pot, symbolic of uncleanness, represents Synagoga, the now surpassed Jewish covenant replaced by the New Covenant in baptism (the bathtub...
...And the chamber pot...
...The painting not only summarizes the late-medieval past, but anticipated the intense piety of a Martin Luther with its strong gaze on the significance of the cross...
...The stylized Hebrew letters give us an important clue...
...The Devil at Isenheim treats only one panel of many but, in that somewhat narrow concentration, it gives us an entry into the complex world of late-medieval piety and prejudice, religious passion and spiritual convictions...
...The panels can be opened or shut in three different ways to provide three quite different narrative scenes...
...The full name of the painter was unknown until this century...
...Commissioned by the Athonite hospital in the German city of Isenheim (the work is now in the museum at Col-mar), its central panel with the overpowering crucified Christ sums up that intense Christocentric piety so characteristic of the late Middle Ages...
...his natal bath with the role of baptism, etc...
...Griinewald's world is not ours and little of his complex iconography speaks to us today no matter how moved we are by his rendering of the crucifixion or his sunburst vision of the Resurrection...
...It is a handsome volume, with beautiful photographs of the entire polyptych and an introductory essay on the work as a whole...
...Not surprisingly, Karl Barth kept a reproduction of it in his study...
...In this particular panel from the Isenheim altar-piece, one can read from left to right the story of demonic deception to redemption while, as Mellinkoff notes, the female figure of Ecclesia observes all, ready to take her place as the continuance of the sacred action being depicted before us...
...the bands with his later fetters...
...Brigid of Sweden may have served as a possible literary source for his work...
...That it should be a chamber pot reflects the popular scatological anti-Semitism of late-medieval life in Germany...
...In Griinewald's painting there is a reversal of the older Christian symbol of the peacock as a symbol of immortality (as old as catacomb art) to become a pictorial representation of demonic rebellion...
...It is so easy to fix the crucifixion panel in one's memory with its stark figures of John the Baptist pointing to the cross, that the other scenes on the altarpiece can easily be forgotten...
...In "second position" there is a central panel of the Nativity of Christ with an angelic concert, a very complex scene filled with curious references, ambiguous symbols, and a complicated composition...
...Far more fascinating (and, from the perspective of history, chastening) is the juxtaposition of an infant's bathtub and a small chamber pot at the foot of the Virgin's bed...
...Theology can also be a tightly compressed visual web of emotions, images, remembrances, allusions, and sentiments, including those that are not always pure or even praiseworthy.even praiseworthy...
...His art was firmly in the transalpine tradition of ecstatic mysticism...
...Even Picasso, not given to many spiritual flights, made a series of ink studies of the Griinewald crucifixion which would get echoed in some aspects of his great work, Guernica, at the end of the 1930s...
...Its "surplus of meaning"-which is what a masterpiece provides-looks forward as well...
Vol. 116 • June 1989 • No. 11
