ABSTRACT
The figure is gaunt and lifeless, the full weight of his body tearing at the nails in his hands and feet, his flesh torn to shreds by what appear to be staples, his head hanging limp like a thing hardly attached to his body. Mathias Grünewald’s fifteenth-century Isenheim Altarpiece presents one of the most powerful and disturbing images of Christ to be found anywhere in Western art. It is a difficult image to take in. This is also true of the two other figures who are central to the altarpiece. One of them, appearing on a side panel, is a hideous figure whose flesh is covered with putrid sores, whose stomach is distended, and whose limbs appear ready to fall from his body altogether. He is suffering from a dreaded and often fatal bacterial disease known as St. Antony’s Fire that had been ravaging Europe for five hundred years. The other figure is St. Antony of Egypt, a saint who was believed to have a particular power to secure healing for those suffering from the disease. He is depicted as enduring his own torment, being pummeled, clawed, and torn at by a host of gruesome, demonic beings.
