Lecture 24: Riemenschneider and Grünewald
and a woman bathed in an aureole of light. Bridging the space between the
Concert of Angels and the Nativity are several still-life objects, including a
crystal pitcher, a tub, and a ceramic pot. In the Nativity, the Madonna and
Child are in the foreground, and in the background is the annunciation to
the shepherds. Roses and architecture are behind the Madonna and Child,
who are in a closed garden. About the Resurrection scene, Huysmans wrote,
“Christ, completely trans¿ gured, rises aloft in smiling majesty; and one is
tempted to regard the enormous halo which encircles him, shining brilliantly
in the starry night like that star of the Magi...the morning star returning...
at night: as the Christmas star grown larger since its birth in the sky, like the
Messiah’s body since his Nativity on earth.”We now look at a pictorial reconstruction of the Isenheim Altarpiece open to
the second interior sequence. There are two paintings À anking the preexisting
sculpture by Hagenauer. At left is the Meeting of Paul and Anthony in the
Desert, three sculptured saints are in the center, and the Temptation of St.
Anthony is at the right. The Meeting of Paul and Anthony in the Desert is a
story from the Golden Legend. Anthony, believing that he was the ¿ rst hermit,
traveled to the wilderness, but he found St. Paul already there. This passage
depicts the two in a convincing wilderness as a raven brings them bread.
Niklaus Hagenauer’s sculpture depicts Sts. Augustine, Anthony, and Jerome.
St. Augustine is shown with the donor at left, St. Anthony is enthroned at
center, and St. Jerome is pictured at right. The sculptured predella, by an
unknown artist, shows Christ and the apostles.The Temptation of St. Anthony shows a bloated man with boils, which
may represent suffering from St. Anthony’s ¿ re, the “burning sickness,”
or erysipelas, a local febrile disease accompanied by inÀ ammation of the
skin, burning, and gangrene of the extremities. The violence of the demons
makes Anthony’s fear and pain palpable. The paper at the lower right has
Anthony’s plea for God’s help, “Where are you, good Jesus, why were you
not here to heal my wounds?” This may have been a representation of the
sufferers’ pleas in the hospital at Isenheim. The cool Alpine mountains in the
background are barren yet a relief from the demons’ torment. Ŷ