Isenheim Altarpiece | Isenheim Altarpiece: The Resurrection by Matthias Grünewald, completed 1515

Matthias Grünewald, detail of the Isenheim Altarpiece

* the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald

The city is renowned for its well preserved old town, its numerous architectural landmarks and its museums, among which is the Unterlinden Museum with the Isenheim Altarpiece.

Displays the Isenheim Altarpiece, a large collection of medieval, Renaissance and baroque Upper-Rhenish paintings and sculptures, archaeological artefacts, design and international modern art.

* 1515 in art-Matthias Grünewald completes the Isenheim Altarpiece

* Matthias Grünewald – Isenheim Altarpiece ( Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, Alsace )

His largest and most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece created between 1506-1515.

Second state of the Isenheim Altarpiece, Unterlinden Museum

Only religious works are included in his small surviving corpus, the most famous being the Isenheim Altarpiece, completed 1515, now in the Musée d ' Unterlinden, Colmar.

By the end of the century, when the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, embarked on his quest to secure as many Dürer paintings as possible, the Isenheim Altarpiece was already generally believed to be a Dürer.

In the late 19th century he was rediscovered, and became something of a cult figure, with the angst-laden expressionism — and absence of any direct classicism — of the Isenheim Altarpiece appealing to both German Nationalists and Modernists.

The composer Paul Hindemith based his 1938 opera Mathis der Maler on the life of Grünewald during the German Peasants ' War ; scene Six includes a partial re-enactment of some scenes from the Isenheim Altarpiece.

This book-length prose-poem uses the preoccupations of Grünewald and especially his creation of the Isenheim Altarpiece to communicate an intensely apocalyptic vision of a world that has abandoned nature.

The Isenheim Altarpiece also features in the last chapter of Sebald's novel The Emigrants, in which the painter Max Ferber describes his intuition of the extreme power of pain after seeing Grünewald's work.

Image: Grunewald Isenheim3. jpg | Isenheim Altarpiece, 1515.

* Isenheim Altarpiece, by Matthias Grünewald

* The Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald

The work's protagonist, Matthias Grünewald, was an actual historical figure who flourished in that era, and whose art, in particular the Isenheim Altarpiece, inspired many creative figures in the early 20th century, including Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel Là-Bas.

The temptation of Anthony the Great | St. Anthony from the Isenheim Altarpiece

The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist explores the role that entheogens in general, and Amanita muscaria in particular, played in Greek and biblical mythology and later on in Renaissance painting, most notably in the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald.

From 1512 to 1514 or 1515 he worked on the Isenheim altarpiece, apparently in partnership with another Mathis, variously surnamed Nithart, Neithart, von Würzburg ( after his place of birth ), or Gothardt.

He was born in Augsburg, Bavaria and died in Isenheim, Alsace.

Grünewald seems to have left Isenheim in a hurry, returning to Frankfurt, and his subsequent poverty suggests he was not fully paid for the altarpiece.

Elias Canetti wrote his novel Auto-da-Fé surrounded by reproductions of the Isenheim altarpiece stuck to the wall.

" Sometimes, as evident in the Ghent and Isenheim works, the hinged panels can be varied in arrangement to show different " views " or " openings " in the piece.

Given the circumstances, the Ghent Altarpiece is a difficult work to use for comparison when assessing other attributions, especially as several other artists from the brothers ' workshops probably worked on it as well.

* Hugo van der Goes, The Trinity Altarpiece ( on loan from the Royal Collection )

These and other absurdities drew upon him the satire of William Hogarth who, in October 1725, produced a Burlesque on Kent's Altarpiece at St. Clement Danes.

San Luca Altarpiece, 1453 ; Tempera on panel ; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

St Lucy Altarpiece | St. Lucy Altarpiece, c. 1445-47, tempera on panel, 198 x 207 cm, Uffizi, Florence.

Among the latter is The Trinity from the altarpiece painted for Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, one of the first works that El Greco executed after he moved to Toledo ; the five great canvases from the Altarpiece of the Colegio de Doña María de Aragon ; and the famous Knight with his hand on her Breast, along with a fine group of other portraits.

The San Cassiano Altarpiece was especially influential on Venetian painters, as it was one of the first of the large compositions in the sacra conversazione format which was perfected by Giovanni Bellini ( Antonello's surviving work in Vienna is only a fragment of the much larger original ).

In 1475, Hugo van der Goes ' Portinari Altarpiece arrived in Florence where it was to have a profound influence on many painters, most immediately Domenico Ghirlandaio who painted an altarpiece imitating its elements.

The subtle layers of meaning uncovered by modern iconographical research in works of Robert Campin such as the Mérode Altarpiece, and of Jan van Eyck such as the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and the Washington Annunciation lie in small details of what are on first viewing very conventional representations.

Giotto used grisaille in the lower registers of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, and Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and their successors painted grisaille figures on the outsides of the wings of triptychs, including the Ghent Altarpiece.

In 1483 he painted famous Bentivoglio Altarpiece, and other frescos, on the walls of the Bentivoglio chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore, and he followed this with many other works.

The Adam and Eve panels on the Ghent Altarpiece, already equipped with fig leaves by Jan van Eyck, were simply replaced with 19th-century panels copying the figures but clothed.

The Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament has four additional panels, two on each side.

In fact, the artistic legacy of his reign is slight, especially when compared to that of his successors, James IV and James V. Such evidence as there is consists of portrait coins produced during his reign that display the king in three-quarter profile wearing an imperial crown, the Trinity Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, which was probably not commissioned by the king, and an unusual hexagonal chapel at Restalrig near Edinburgh, perhaps inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The Nazis hid looted art in salt mines at Altaussee such as the Ghent Altarpiece.

Writing in 1933, art historian Bryson Burroughs, who at that time attributed to Hubert the Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych and whom he describes as " the fountainhead of northern painting ", suggests he did the underdrawing for the Ghent Altarpiece with Jan painting in after his brother's death.

From this period are his frescoes Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi, the ceiling in San Crisogono ( 1622 ) of San Chrysogonus in Glory, the portrait of Pope Gregory XV ( now in the Getty Museum, and The Burial of Saint Petronilla or St. Petronilla Altarpiece for the Vatican ( now in the Museo Capitolini ), which is considered his masterpiece.

The Virgin Mary in Andrea Mantegna's San Zeno Altarpiece ( Mantegna ) | San Zeno Altarpiece combines pseudo-Arabic halos and garment hems, with an Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting | Oriental carpet at her feet ( 1456 – 1459 ).

Altarpiece with carved and painted predella at St. Mary's church, Stralsund | Marienkirche Stralsund, Germany.

In the sixth chapel to the left of the nave is a SS Ignatius, Erasmus and Blaise by Raffaellino del Garbo ; the next chapel has one of the panels of Annunziata Altarpiece ( 1507 ) by Perugino, once at the high altar of the church ( the Deposition, begun by Filippino Lippi, is now at the Gallerie dell ' Accademia, while other panels are divided between other collections in the world ).

While Panofsky's claim that the painting formed a kind of certificate of marriage is not accepted by all subsequent writers, his analysis of the symbolic function of the details is broadly agreed, and has been applied to many other Early Netherlandish paintings, especially a number of depictions of the Annunciation set in richly detailed interiors, a tradition for which the Arnolfini Portrait and the Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin represent the start ( in terms of surviving works at least ).