Featured Image: Grünewald in a 19th century depiction on the de:Frankoniabrunnen, by Ferdinand von Miller (1824), now in front of the Würzburg Residence.
This is a short recount of how I discovered Matthias Grunewald, the late German Renaissance Master of the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is one of the best journeys of my life.
Updated 14 March 2024
“Mathis der Maler”, a Paul Hindemith Opera
In 1995 I was living in London and one of my favorite past times was going to the opera. The Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London was the most famous and reputable, but at the same time more conservative compared to other operas in the UK. However, there was the odd occasion when a “radical” production would be staged. One of them was Peter Sellar’s staging of Paul Hindemith’s opera, “Mathis der Maler”. This is how I was introduced to the mystical world of Mathias Grunewald.
I was one of the lucky ones who got a last minute STB ‘stand-by’ ticket in the orchestra stalls for 20 pounds. These tickets would normally sell for more than 80 pounds. I was seated in row B at the center of the stalls, and could hear the Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen breath as he conducted the orchestra.
The Royal Opera organized on Saturday 11 November 1995 a study day, so that people would learn about the subject of the opera, the painter Mathis, and the people behind the production would present their views and aesthetic ideas.
Luckily I attended and got to meet Peter Sellars, the American theater director of the staging.
He was kind enough to sign the program with the following:
| Dear Nick, So wonderful to meet you. Thanks for your GENTLE sense of ANARCHY. Peter Sellars. |
But the key person as far as Grunewald was concerned, was the lecture given by Anne Tennant, an art historian, which was the best introduction to the world of Grunewald. From this moment on, I became hooked.
I went to the opera, enjoyed it immensely becasue Hindemith is one of my favorites, but my mind was travelling to Isenheim.
The trip to Colmar, Stuppach and Karlsruhe
I therefore decided that I had to see the Isenheim altarpiece and on April 1996, I embarked on a short trip to visit Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece, the painting of the Madonna in Stuppach, and the Crucifixion in Karlsruhe. I picked the weekend of 13-14 April 1996, which happened to be the Greek Orthodox Easter weekend.
The route
Fly from London Heathrow to Basel – Mulhouse, rent a car and drive to Colmar.
Then drive to Bad Mergentheim (some 350 km) to spend the night, Stuppach, Karlsruhe and back to the Basel – Mulhouse airport.
Colmar
The center of Colmar is picturesque, with canals and medieval houses and buildings. It is also small and compact, so that you can get around quickly.
The Isenheim Alterpiece
“Beauty is only the beginning of the terrible.” Rainer – Maria Rilke
The Isenheim Alterpiece is exhibited in the Unterlinden Museum, a former Dominican convent, dating back to the 13th century.
The Crucifixion panel is the most horrid depiction of suffering leading to death that I have seen. Being such, nevertheless it captivates the observer, at least the one who has some sort of affinity to Christianity. Its intensity and brutality give new meaning to the Resurrection.
The French writer and art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote about Grunewald:
“He was the most uncompromising of realists, but his morgue redeemer, his
sewer Deity, let the observer know that realism could be truly transcendent …
Grunewald was the most uncompromising of Idealists… In this canvas was
revealed the masterpiece of an art obeying the unopposable urge to render the
tangible and the invisible, to make manifest the crying impurity of the flesh and
to make the sublime the infinite distress of the soul.”
As I mention in an article I have written on the Isenheim Altarpiece, in a way it is Germany’s Sistine Chapel.
The Madonna in the Rosegarden
A stone’s throw from the Museum is the Dominican Church where I saw the masterpiece of Grunewald’s mentor, Martin Schongauer’s, the “Madonna in the Rosegarden”, painted in 1473.
Was the Madonna in the Rosegarden related to the Madonna in Stuppach? I would find out the next day.
Bad Mergentheim
I spent the night in Bad Mergentheim, in the Main-Tauber-Kreis district in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
The room in the ‘Alte Muenze’ Gasthaus was clean and spacious.
The next day, Orthodox Easter Sunday, I had a wonderful walk in the park around the town’s castle, called home and then drove the short distance to Stuppach.
The Stuppacher Madonna
Suppach is a village 2 km south of the town of Bad Mergentheim.
In the chapel of the village church, the visitor can see Matthias Grunewald’s masterpiece “The Stuppacher Madonna”. Having seen the Isenheim Alterpiece, the Stuppach Madonna is a brilliant return to some sort of normal life, where there is beauty, love, happinness. I could see the influence of Schongauer, even van der Weyden.
Ticket to view the Stuppacher Madonna
The Stuppacher Madonna and Christ’s Lamentation in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter and Alexander in Aschaffenburg are the only Grunewald paintings that are not kept in museums today. I have seen a copy of it, but not the original.
The Karlsruhe Crucifixion
Following my visit to the Stuppacher Madonna, I had time to quickly drive to Karlsruhe and visit the Staatliche Kunsthalle (State Art Gallery), where one of Grunewald’s Crucifixion’s is kept.
It has been painted some years after the ISenheim altarpiece, it is even drarker, but not less gruesome.
In the same museum they have a drawing of Christ on the Cross, but it is not exhibited, so I did not get to see it.
As I was exiting the museum room where the “Crucifixion” painting hangs, I stumbled upon two beautiful etchings of female saints. This is my favorite, because of the hair.
The Basel Crucifixion
Some years later, in 2003, I visited the Arts Museum in Basel (Kunstmuseum) to see the Crucifixion. Although painted at about the same time with the Isenheim Altarpiece, it is much softer as far as the depiction of the Holy Drama goes, and it has much more light.
Epilogue
And so I have traced the painter’s personal journey back to its origin.
Up to the Basel Crucifixion, Grunewald was painting like one of late German Renaissance Masters. The Isenheim Altarpiece was his “Turn”.
From the relatively ordinary Basel Crucifixion, the painter enters the world beyond with the Isenheim Alterpiece. And he continues with the Karlsruhe painting.
He is not a man living in a world without beauty, he is a man who can appreciate beauty because he has seen the absolute horror.
