Matthias Grnewald

Matthias Grnewald (his real name probably Gothart Nithart Mathis), probably born in Wrzburg in Bavaria , c. 1475 - 1480 and died in Halle , in Saxony-Anhalt , in 1528 , was a painter and hydraulic engineer German of the Renaissance , contemporary of Albrecht Drer.

Summary 1 Biography 1.1 Identity 1.2 The issue of self-portrait 2 The work 2.1 The pictorial world 2.2 Gallery 1: The Evolution of Crucifixion 2.3 Gallery 2: the gray of the Heller altarpiece 2.4 Analysis of an altarpiece 2.5 Gallery 3: Faces of Virgin 2.6 Influence 3 Main works 4 Notes and references 4.1 Sources 5 Annexes External 5.1 Links

/ / Biography

Identity

The identity of "Matthias Grnewald" remains uncertain. This name was given, quite arbitrarily, by Joachim von Sandrart ^{The question of self-portrait}

Regarding the date of birth of the painter, the first art historians who have attempted to reconstruct his life, including the pioneer Heinrich Alfred Schmid , have located rather between 1455 (terminus post quem) and 1460 , while that 'from the 1970s, the idea of Grnewald born before 1483 (the terminus ante quem), given fairly quickly too, has gradually imposed.

In all cases, the proposed dates have been based on stylistic and iconographic considerations and the complex issue of self-portraiture. To summarize it, it was assumed, based on a drawing of his pen on the one hand and an oil portrait of a young unknown artist kept in Stockholm on the other hand, that Grnewald to be or represented himself in the guise of St. Sebastian altarpiece Issenheim lookalike older self-portrait

- Similarity confirmed by radiographic examination of the altarpiece completed in 1974, which showed that the identity of the two faces was even more pronounced before the final touches - or in the guise of St. Paul of the same work, very close to the character represented the drawing: to 1515 , then, and judging by the same paint, Grnewald would be a thirty-brown rounded nose, a fifties blond with blue eyes, pointed nose. This contradiction has not been settled by the fact that Sandrart illustrates his presentation of "Matthias Grnewald" reproductions of one or the other of the two faces, supposed to represent the young artist, then aged. As it is known that Sandrart never seen the altarpiece Isenheimer - he saw in his youth and only works in the meantime disappeared Frankfurt and Mainz, as well as original drawings in possession of a collector Roman - and he proposes that the biography is highly fanciful and flawed, give rise to the painter at a time more or less accurate depending on the assumed age of a character who is himself now appears that computation quite risky: it was nevertheless the only track followed by several generations of art historians who, approaching the painter of his contemporary Albrecht Drer , were convinced that he had had himself also represent somewhere in his work.

A certain type of face, that of drawing and St. Paul, characterized by its almond eyes, pointed nose, a certain softness in the mouth and twist more or less pronounced neck, back ceaselessly into the paint master It certainly has been assumed that this was all self-portraits. But looking at all these faces together, it is difficult to find an essentially common, especially since it is often two different characters within the same picture: the St. George or St. Christophe Lindenhardt the altarpiece, and even Christ and the "man with turban" in mockery of Christ. Since the 1990s, we returned to an assumption that was already one of the great art historian Wilhelm Fraenger in 1930: Grnewald, who n'entretenait little correspondence and left no written autobiographical, does would actually be represented anywhere in its body painted or drawn.

The work

The twenty-first ^century, experts attribute with certainty to Matthias Grnewald ten works including several polyptychs and 35 drawings, divided into European and American collections. His first painting is the unquestioned emotional outraged Christ, dating from 1503 , preserved in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich , which is very close to the painting of the late Gothic in the valley of the Rhine. His most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece , the centerpiece of the collections of Museum Unterlinden of Colmar.

The pictorial world

Grnewald's work, as exclusively religious in what has survived in what is attested by evidence, belongs to the period of transition between Gothic and late Renaissance , and is marked by a mysticism which sometimes in hallucination. We have identified a symbolism derived straight from the visions of St. Bridget of Sweden , then most read. The wealth of strange scenes, full of details and barely understandable transcended by a dazzling technique at both the finite chromatic rendering of volumes, surfaces and terrain, accompanied by a very loose management and perfectly disconcerting prospects and relations of magnitude, which increase the effect. This dichotomy between technology and construction of space, which culminates in the central panel of the altarpiece Isenheim , whose left side is commonly known as The Concert of Angels, could be explained fairly consistent once rediscovered writings of this mystical Swedish , at about the time when Fraenger also rediscovered the " Hammer of Witches "to reinterpret Hieronymus Bosch , an artist with whom we have sometimes compared to the wealth of Grnewald's fantastic imagination and fascination cruelty, but there is anything in common between the Flemish meticulous, graceful and in the tradition of broad plan and the German far more physical and plastic, particularly at home in the close. Grnewald but is best known for his poignant views of the suffering of Christ before his crucifixion all, four in number - Basel , Washington DC , Colmar and Karlsruhe - that his mockery of Christ (Munich) and Carrying the Cross (Karlsruhe ) do not yield very little in terms of emphasis and raw violence.

It is at the crucifixions that the progression of style and mystique of the artist seems in any case easier to follow: the crucifixion of Basel than in Karlsruhe, a period of about twenty-two years, the body tortured Jesus, crown of thorns, the nails that pierced his prizonium become increasingly enormous, while the cross bend more and more under its weight. Most art historians agree in seeing continued progress on large and regular time intervals, though some were much closer to the crucifixion of Washington and Colmar, it is undisputed that the crucifixion is kept in Basel for share a youthful work. This work presents some stylistic similarities with the work of Hans Holbein the Elder , which has concluded that Grunewald had been working for a time in the workshop of it. Pierre Vaisse also assumes that Grunewald had seen the sculptures Burgundian of Claus Sluter , whose expressive style have influenced and tormented. Other art historians like Heinrich Zlch, also believe it would have made a trip to Italy, like most painters of his day, which was manifested in the landscape visible through the window behind the " Saint Sebastian "and the panorama of Rome" Miracle of the Snow "Museum of Freiburg in Breisgau. It is certain that in any case constant Grnewald's work is the lack of spatial depth in his paintings: the "Last Supper", the first table still awkward but already by the unconventional arrangement and gestures of the Apostles in the altarpiece "Saint Erasmus and Saint Maurice" dazzling technique, the characters seem to overlap. The frequent use of a dark background and the focus on body language reinforces this impression.

Gallery 1: The Evolution of Crucifixion

Crucifixion Basel

Crucifixion Washington

Crucifixion at Colmar

Karlsruhe Crucifixion

Grnewald has collaborated with Albrecht Drer , the altar says "Heller Altarpiece", named after its sponsor, to Frankfurt. It remains to this altarpiece dismantled the four side panels of grisaille Grnewald, depicting two saints (museums of Frankfurt) and two saints (museum of Karlsruhe), while the central panel of Drer disappeared.

Gallery 2: the grays of the Heller altarpiece

Saint Lucia

St. Elizabeth

St Cyriac

Saint Laurent

Numerous altarpieces painted by Grnewald for Mainz Cathedral , and certified by various accounts, have meanwhile disappeared in the depths of the Baltic Sea when the ship Sweden that carried them as spoils of war sank.

Art historians like Erwin Panofsky have widely commented on stylistic and spiritual world that seems separate from his fellow contemporaries Grnewald, Drer, Albrecht Altdorfer , Hans Holbein the Younger and Lucas Cranach the Elder , not to mention the most important. However, as a painter Hans Baldung is quite inconceivable without knowledge that even partial implementation of the master. But the contemporary German painter nearest Grnewald is undoubtedly Jrg Ratgeb.

Regarding the graphic work, there remain Grnewald fifty drawings in pencil or ink - often highlighted with gouache - and watercolors, all of which are sketches for works either remaining or missing but attested as the Transfiguration painted - along with Heller altarpiece - for monks Dominican Frankfurt or altarpieces in the cathedral of Mainz. The particularly high quality of their bill and the great plasticity of representations of saints called Grnewald Sandrart why the " Correggio German. "