27 Sep Grünewald’s Christ
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (pictured above) is considered one of if not the most terrifying Crucifixion paintings in Western art. Christ’s limp body hangs from a cross set against a lead-gray sky. He appears covered in whip marks. His face is turned down; his lips are blue. A tattered white cloth barely covers his hips and groin. Below him are St. John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and a faint Blessed Mother held up by St. John the Apostle—a tableau of pain and sorrow dwarfed by the towering spectacle of Christ’s ravaged form.
Grünewald originally painted the altar piece for the Monastery of St. Anthony and the Antonine Hospital in Issenheim. The Antonine monks were known for their treatment of ergotism, or “St. Anthony’s fire,” a plague common in France between 900 and 1300 AD.
Though it is rare today due to stringent food screening and modern agricultural practices, ergotism was common enough. By ingesting grains and cereals infected with ergot fungus, ergotism victims suffered gangrene, convulsions, as well as a rash covering their entire body.
Today, visitors to the Unterlinden Museum can see Grünewald’s altarpiece in person. It is part of a museum that is housed in a 13th-century Dominican convent, approximately 14 miles from the France-Germany border.
Visitors are often shocked at the altarpiece’s size, and in particular how it is elevated so that Christ’s feet are eye-level with the viewer. Like Mary and St. John, viewers gaze upward, beholding the painting from the foot of the cross, just as the mourners in the painting do. The result, ideally, is a forced intimacy with Christ’s suffering. The viewer gazes upward from the foot of the cross. The Crucified Lord gazes down on the viewer.
And upon closer inspection, viewers will see that Grünewald’s Christ does not bear whip marks, but sores—pustules of disease. Christ’s hands and feet are contorted, splayed outwardly with toes and fingers pointing in random directions. Thus it is clear: Christ bears the pain and wounds of ergotism.
For the medieval mind, such an image was not merely a work of art: it was a theology in color and brushstrokes. Christ’s agony was their agony, his suffering their suffering. They understood, intuitively, that Christ’s wounds were not only a means of spiritual salvation ,but a kind of solidarity with their own fleshly torments. The cross, in Grünewald’s vision, became not only a symbol of redemption but also of shared pain—a reality that reverberated in the Antonine hospital, where Christ’s suffering was reflected in the patients themselves.
Those Medieval visitors to the Monastery of St. Anthony and the Antonine Hospital would have seen the connection between Grünewald’s crucified Christ and those suffering from ergotism. Grünewald’s art, for them, is a theology of suffering in color and brushstroke, a depiction not just of redemption but also of an intimately-shared disease.
The Exaltation of the Cross
Earlier this month, we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The Church draws our attention to Christ’s overcoming death by being put to death on a cross. The Gospel acclamation—“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Cross you have redeemed the world”—acknowledges this incredible paradox: Christ’s death conquered death.
In his defiant sonnet, “Death, be not proud,” John Donne’s declares, “Death, thou shalt die.” Donne captures the essence of Christ’s Cross. Christ’s paschal mystery has transformed the horror of death. In Christ, the cross is not an instrument of violence, but our salvation.
With St. Benedict’s intercession, may God grant us the grace to say the Gospel acclamation: “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Cross you have redeemed the world.”
In Christ & St. Benedict,
Darryl De Marzio
Executive Director of the Portsmouth Institute for Faith and Culture
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