Matthias Grünewald

German painter

• Born: c. 1475
• Birthplace: Würzburg, bishopric of Würzburg (now in Germany)
• Died: August 1, 1528
• Place of death: Halle, archbishopric of Magdeburg (now in Germany)

Grünewald’s work was the culmination of the Gothic tradition in German painting while giving evidence of the primacy of individual artistic expression within the tradition of the Italian Renaissance. He employed Gothic principles of expressiveness and Renaissance pictorial conventions, creating a unique style that transcended the limitations of the traditions out of which he worked.

Early Life

Matthias Grünewald (MAHT-tee-ahs GREWN-vahlt), a figure of great stature in his own time, appears to have been quickly forgotten after his death. This neglect may be attributed in part to his preference for Gothic expressiveness in a period given over to the aesthetic concerns of the Italian Renaissance. Grünewald’s preoccupation with mystical interpretations and paintings that were largely religious was out of place in an increasingly worldly age for which strong, stark religious themes had less and less impact and significance.

Direct knowledge of Grünewald is scant. Besides his extant works, little was left behind by the artist himself that would give a clear picture. Instead, one must rely on secondary sources and documents and letters of the time. Early knowledge of Grünewald arose from the efforts of Joachim von Sandrart, a seventeenth century German artist and historian. Even Sandrart had difficulty in finding information on Grünewald. In the early twentieth century, another German scholar, Heinrich Schmidt, uncovered some of the facts of Grünewald’s life. In the 1920’s yet another German scholar, W. K. Zulch, wrote the basic modern work on Grünewald, discovering Grünewald’s actual surname in the process. There exists no unchallenged portrait of Grünewald, although the painting of Saint Sebastian in Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece is thought to be a self-portrait. Grünewald is thought to have been born near Würzburg around 1475. Of his early life little is known. The exact place and source of his training are not known, although it is generally believed that Grünewald’s general style and coloring reflect the predisposition of artists who worked in the Franconian region along the Main and Rhine Rivers.

Life’s Work

Grünewald’s first known work is the Lindenhart altarpiece, dating from 1503. Between 1504 and 1519, he was a resident in Seligenstadt, outside Würzburg. There he is listed as a master with apprentices; he executed paintings, the Basel Crucifixion for one, and was court painter to Archbishop Uriel von Gemmingen from 1508 to 1514. During this same period, Grünewald supervised design and repair of various buildings, notably Schloss Aschaffenburg.

In 1514, during a difficult time between Protestant and Catholic factions in Germany, Grünewald became the court painter for Albrecht von Brandenburg. In 1519, Grünewald is believed to have married, although the marriage may not have been a happy one. His wife brought with her a son, Andreas, whom Grünewald adopted. He apparently used his wife’s surname, Niethart, occasionally. In 1525, Grünewald left the service of the archbishop under accusations related to his sympathies with the Peasants’ War. He was acquitted by the archbishop but did not return to his service. Books he left behind at his death testify to his Protestant/Lutheran sympathies. These included a New Testament, a number of sermons, and pamphlets, all by Martin Luther. In 1526, Grünewald apprenticed his adopted son, Andreas Niethart, to Arnold Rucker, an organ builder, sculptor, and table maker. Grünewald died in August of 1528, while working on a commission for the cities of Magdeburg and Halle in Saxony.

Grünewald treated exclusively religious subjects when he painted. Only a small number of Grünewald’s works have survived, and his total output was probably not extensive. Only two of his works bear autograph dates, and these form the basis for a chronology of all his work. These works include the Bindlach altarpiece (1503) and his greatest work, the Isenheim altarpiece (1515). Two other works are dated on the frames, The Mocking of Christ (1503) and the Maria Schell altarpiece (1515). All other dates are conjecture, based on historical clues and stylistic evidence. As did his contemporaries Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, and Lucas Cranach, the Elder, Grünewald did not conform to the fashions of the time or concede to the ideals of the Italian Renaissance that dominated in matters of taste and style. In his gruesome realism and complex iconography, Grünewald remained German and Gothic in his treatment of his subjects. He restricted himself to illustrating the fundamental themes of Christian faith, rendered with a sense of the mystical and the ecstatic.

Grünewald painted the Madonna and saints, but either by conscious intent or out of religious fervor and fascination with the subject or both he specialized in painting the Passion of Christ. From the beginning to the end of his career, Grünewald returned time after time to the subject of the Crucifixion, of which four versions are still preserved in galleries in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and West Germany.

Grünewald’s work is subjective, the intuitive product of a personal artist who feels his work deeply. Grünewald’s work substitutes force and sincerity in place of the Italian Renaissance preference for beauty and elegance. Instead of the concrete depiction of form through the use of descriptive line and chiaroscuro, Grünewald emphasizes the mystical through expressive line and color. While he understood and made use of the Italian Renaissance conventions of perspective and correct proportion, Grünewald saw them as being of lesser value than the spiritual qualities of his work. For the artists of the Italian Renaissance, the new conventions were at least as important as the old values that arguably might be said to have become means to using the new conventions as much as anything else. All the qualities the Italian Renaissance considered important dignity, repose, symmetry, balance, serenity, perfection were for Grünewald merely ornamentation, elements not pertinent to his interest in and interpretation of his subject.

Yet Grünewald’s work was not merely emotional display. For one thing, he did not portray superficial emotions. The emotive character of his work came from his use of strong dichotomies real, temporal, and secular versus ideal, eternal, and spiritual in his interpretation of his subject. The conditions of his figures are symbolic, with emphasis placed on their devotional and spiritual aspects rather than their merely being descriptive and narrative. His subjects are traditional, but his treatment of them is unique, often overwhelming. An excellent example is Grünewald’s interpretation of the risen Christ in the Isenheim altarpiece, which makes use of all the above-mentioned dichotomies. One is prepared by one’s initial encounter with the excruciating, visceral vision of the painfully crucified Christ on the outside panel of the altarpiece. Then to behold the risen Christ on the inside is to be moved ecstatically.

Grünewald, moved as he had to have been by his desire to express the spirituality of his subject, transcended the limitations of the medium and conventions he employed. One’s admiration is inspired not by the artist’s mastery of technique, though clearly Grünewald was a superb craftsperson, but by the spiritual impact of his work, which is as real and felt today as it surely had to have been when it was first viewed in the sixteenth century. His figures appear forced and affected in pose and manner, because they are meant to be larger than life more than mere representations of a historical event. While understanding line and form in realistic representation, Grünewald gives primacy to expression of qualities rather than to accurate depiction of appearances. He did this through his extreme treatments of the human figure, creating the expressiveness of a psychic condition and presenting a spiritual reality as much as a visual image.

Significance

Grünewald was a Gothic artist with the sensibility of the spirituality of the Middle Ages. A comparison of Grünewald’s work and style with the standards of the Italian Renaissance would be a misplaced attempt to understand and appreciate his work. Judged in terms of the Italian Renaissance, Grünewald’s work appears repellent, disdainful of form, contemptuous of moderation, and lacking in grace. Judged in terms of an individual’s ability to give form and expression to those images central to Western Christian spirituality, Grünewald’s work appears poignant, penetrating, and transcendent.

Grünewald was not so much a Gothic artist as he was an artist who recognized that the Gothic era gave best and fullest expression to spirituality. Grünewald did not imitate the Gothic style, but he adopted fully the principles of the Gothic, realizing their timeless nature. Nor did Grünewald refute the ideals of the Italian Renaissance as much as he ignored them, choosing to use only those formal elements useful to his artistic purpose.

Bibliography

Benesch, Otto. German Painting from Dürer to Holbein. Translated by H. S. B. Harrison. Geneva, Switzerland: Éditions d’Art Albert Skira, 1966. Based on a series of lectures given by Benesch in 1959 and 1960 at the University of Vienna. Benesch, an eminent scholar, emphasized the Germanic and Gothic aspects of his subjects’ work.

Burkhard, Arthur. Matthias Grünewald: Personality and Accomplishment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936. Reprint. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1976. The first comprehensive treatment in English of the life and work of Matthias Grünewald. The author’s intent is to suggest the aesthetic and personal underpinnings of Grünewald while connecting him closely with his German Gothic heritage. The extensive bibliography cites only German sources.

Cuttler, Charles D. Northern Painting from Pucelle to Brueghel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. A later study of painting of Northern European artists, attempting not only to place them in context with the Italian Renaissance but also to show their own peculiar characteristics and styles. Suggests the social, philosophical, and aesthetic influences of the time.

Hayum, Andrée. The Isenheim Altarpiece: God’s Medicine and the Painter’s Vision. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Book-length analysis of Grünewald’s most famous work, places it first in the context of the hospital chapel for which it was made, then in the broader cultural contexts of contemporary religious sermons and emergent print culture. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Mellinkoff, Ruth. The Devil at Isenheim: Reflections of Popular Belief in Grünewald’s Altarpiece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. A lavishly illustrated iconographic study of the Isenheim altarpiece. Mellinkoff focuses on the panel depicting the Madonna and Child being honored by a concert of angels; in an original and persuasive interpretation, Mellinkoff argues that among the angels is Lucifer himself, shown in the moment of awareness of the folly of his rebellion.

Richter, Gottfried. The Isenheim Altar: Suffering and Salvation in the Art of Grünewald. Translated by Donald Maclean. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1998. Brief but important study of the meaning of the altarpiece to contemporary viewers, for whom sickness and disease were still inexorably linked to sinfulness. Includes color illustrations.

Scheja, Georg. The Isenheim Altarpiece. Translated by Robert Erich Wolf. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1969. An extensive, authoritative discussion of Grünewald’s best-known work. The author cites possible visual and literary sources for the work. The extensive footnotes are an excellent second source of information.

Ziermann, Horst, with Erika Beissel. Matthias Grünewald. Translated by Joan Clough-Laub. New York: Prestel, 2001. Survey of what little documentary evidence exists of Grünewald’s life to construct both a biography and an analysis of his surviving paintings and drawings. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, index.