Isenheim Crucifixion (central panel, c. 1512–1516),
Matthias Grünewald (c. 1475–1528).
In the summer of 1967, a young American painter traveling through Europe stood transfixed before a painting of the Crucifixion in the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, France. In a journal entry written on July 22, the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, Thomas Gordon Smith describes the Isenheim Crucifixion by Matthias Grünewald in vivid detail: “Christ hangs to the right half of the painting…. His weight makes the horizontal bar bend so convincingly and the feet are nailed at the bottom…. The hollowed-out stomach and armpits, the presence of the rib cage, and all of the clearly delineated muscles of the shoulders, arms, and legs are barely held to the bone. The skin, an overall sickening yellow-green, is pocked and pricked, openings are red, of blood and muscle shown through, and are surrounded with purple, spike-driven hands which supplicate through the expressive fingers. No energy is left to support the …More