"so much pain"

Time for a bit of an art history lesson and a story. (All you homeschooling friends, grab your kids!)

This is the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by a man named Mathias Grünwald in about 1500. He was a German artist, and this altarpiece was painted for the chapel of a monastery in Isenheim near Colmar, France.

First off, I'll explain a couple of things that help us look at this painting. An Altarpiece is a large painting on a panel or panels that stands right behind the altar, typically in a Catholic church. What that means is that every week when people came forward to the altar to take communion, they were looking directly at whatever image was on the altarpiece. As my art history teacher used to always say, "Notice what the artist wanted people to think about right at the moment they were receiving communion." So, we have Jesus dying on the cross. Seems appropriate.

However, many altarpieces (like this one) had multiple panels that could be opened like doors so that when the doors were closed, you saw one picture and when they were opened for mass or a special service, you saw a different image. The crucifixion on this altarpiece is on the outside. That means it is the image that people saw whenever they walked into the chapel - not just during mass.

Okay, time to look a little closer. The first photo shows that there are several parts that are each separate pictures. It's easy to find more information on-line about the side and bottom pictures, but I'm going to focus on the middle part - the Crucifixion.

What do we see in the picture? Jesus dying on the cross, four other people and a lamb. One person is Mary Magdalene (kneeling) Mary the mother of Jesus (fainting in white), John the evangelist (in red, holding Mary as she faints) and John the Baptist (pointing and holding a Bible).

Some questions people ask:
Why do the people look so weird? Well, they are kind of "out of proportion " (small heads, extra long arms and legs) because German artists at the time exaggerated how things looked in order to show how people felt or to symbolize certain ideas. In this picture the exaggerations help us see how sad the people who loved Jesus were and how much pain they were in.

This isn't very accurate from the Bible, is it?
No, not really. There are parts that are accurate, but not all of it. The artist wasn't trying to make it perfectly accurate; he was trying to show us what was important about that moment in time and some of what he believes and feels about it. For example, John the Baptist is holding scriptures and pointing - which tells us about how the prophecies from the Old Testament were talking about Jesus. Grünewald also painted the words in Latin next to John the Baptist that mean, "He must increase and I must decrease" which do come straight from the Bible. Again, it helps us know that not only is Jesus who the old prophets talked about, but also who John the Baptist had been talking about.

The Lamb and the cross and the cup below are symbols too - symbols of how Jesus is the lamb that was sacrificed for us.

What's all over Jesus' skin?
This gets to my favorite part!

I have always LOVED the Isenheim altarpiece because it shows us something really wonderful (and true) that the artist understood about Christ. Jesus' skin is all marked up in this painting for a very special reason. The monastery in Isenheim was run by the Brothers of St. Anthony, and served as a hospital. The Brothers of St. Anthony were especially skilled at taking care of people with some really painful skin diseases. The people who came to the hospital sometimes looked a lot like Jesus did here - big sores all over their bodies.

So, imagine being a patient at this monastery and walking into the chapel to pray. You feel miserable and you look up and see this picture of Jesus. Not only do you see a reminder of how he suffered to save you, but you notice his skin looks like yours. You see that Jesus is someone who knows what it's like to be you! He knows what your pain feels like, and like the Bible says he is always "interceding" for us when we don't even know how to describe what we feel.
Fabulous!

Okay, now my story. They moved the Isenheim altarpiece from Isenheim to a museum in Colmar, France. Colmar is less than an hour's drive from us here in Kandern, and over Christmas break we drove to see it. Dream come true for me! It was wonderful -- though cold! I picked up a few postcards of it and took them to language class with me to show one of my classmates who was curious about the painting (I had told the class that I had gone to Colmar). The first thing she said when she saw it was, "So much pain!" Yes. Exactly. I replied, "That's why I love it. It shows Jesus as someone who knows our pain."

This is one of the things I love about great art. It speaks so powerfully about how people see and understand the world and opens up such wonderful conversations.

Questions anyone? LOL
Actually, if you have them and send them as comments, I'll do my best to answer.