stretches her hands up in grief and prayer. The painting is dated 1515 on the
ointment jar near the Magdalene. Christ’s head inclines toward the side of
the scene with his mother. On the other side is St. John the Baptist and the
Lamb. John the Baptist was not present at the Cruci¿ xion; thus, this is not
the historical narrative but a symbolic scene
in which the forerunner points to Christ’s
body with a fore¿ nger. With St. John the
Baptist is the inscription from the Gospel
of St. John (3:30), “He must increase, but I
must decrease.”
The Lamb is representative of John 1:29,
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sins of the world.” The Lamb
holds the reed cross and bleeds into the
chalice. The Lamb is a link between the
Old Testament and the New Testament, not
a historical narrative but a symbolic link.
Christ’s body shows the dis¿ guring wounds and the À esh color. The hospital
at Isenheim was for patients suffering from ergotism, a disease caused by
ergot or rye fungus, which was a serious afÀ iction in the Middle Ages.
Symptoms included inÀ ated bellies and gangrenous limbs. Christ’s feet
may be an illustration of the words of the contemporary mystic Bridget of
Sweden, “His feet were curled round the nails as round door hinges toward
the other side.” Apropos of the gesture of the Baptist, Bridget wrote, “Thou
art the Lamb that John pointed out with his ¿ nger.” The predella shows St.
Mary Magdalene at left, the Madonna, and St. John on the right supporting
Christ’s body.
Our next example shows a pictorial reconstruction of the Isenheim
Altarpiece open to the ¿ rst interior sequence. It depicts the Annunciation
on the left, a Concert of Angels at center left, the Nativity at center right,
and the Resurrection to the right. The left wing shows the Annunciation.
Huysmans wrote that the Madonna appeared as “a good solid German
woman fed on salted provisions and bloated with beer.” In the Concert of
Angels, there is an angel with a large viol, a smaller viol-playing angel under
the canopy, a demonic ¿ gure at left, prophets at the tops of the colonnettes,
The central panel, the
Cruci¿ xion, shows
St. John the Evangelist
at left with the two
Marys—the Madonna
in the white robe and
St. Mary Magdalene—
at his feet.