Grünewald, Mathis

Grünewald, Mathis (b ?Würzburg, c.1475/80; d Halle, 30/31 Aug. 1528). German painter, the greatest of Dürer's contemporaries. His real name was Mathis Gothardt or Neithardt, but this was not discovered until the 1930s. The origin of the nickname Grünewald (‘greenwood’) is unknown, but it was evidently not used before the 17th century, notably by Sandrart, who published the first biography of the artist in his Teutsche Akademie (1675). This haziness about his identity reflects the isolation and individuality of his work and the obscurity into which he fell after his death; he had no known pupils and (unlike most of his German contemporaries) he did not make woodcuts or engravings, which would have spread his name. He was successful for most of his career, working as court painter to two successive archbishops of Mainz, but his reputation did not long survive, and in 1597, when the Emperor Rudolf II (see Habsburg) tried to buy his masterpiece, the Isenheim Altarpiece, the name of the painter had already been forgotten.

The surviving documentation on Grünewald is meagre and sometimes confusing, for it appears that some references that have previously been assumed to allude to him are in fact concerned with other artists called ‘ Master Mathis’ (the name was fairly common at the time). He spent much of his career in Aschaffenburg, a town near Frankfurt, and it is there that he is first firmly documented in 1504/5. By 1510 he was working for the Archbishop of Mainz, Uriel von Gemmingen, whose official residence was in Aschaffenburg. Von Gemmingen died in 1514 and Grünewald was also employed by his successor Albrecht von Brandenburg (who was also Archbishop of Magdeburg). In addition to being a painter, he is known to have worked as a hydraulic engineer and supervisor of architectural works. The little that is recorded of his personal life comes from Sandrart, who says he was melancholy and withdrawn and made an unhappy marriage late in life. There is no documentary confirmation of his marriage, but he is known to have had an adopted son called Andreas Neithardt, whose surname the painter sometimes used for himself in documents relating to the boy, thus creating one of the sources of confusion about the painter's identity.

Grünewald's work forms a complete contrast to that of Dürer. Whereas Dürer—an intellectual imbued with Renaissance ideas—had limitless curiosity about the visual world, Grünewald concentrated exclusively on religious themes, and in particular the Crucifixion, a subject he was to make his own. His most famous treatment of it is the central panel of his masterpiece, the altarpiece for the hospital church of the Anthonite abbey at Isenheim in Alsace, completed in about 1515 and now in the Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar. The hospital at Isenheim cared particularly for plague victims, and the concentration on Christ's appalling physical agonies, his body gruesomely mangled and torn, must have bolstered the faith of the sick by reminding them that he too had suffered horribly before triumphing over death. In the Resurrection, Christ displays his nail and lance wounds, but the lacerations that cover his body in the Crucifixion have disappeared, affirming that the patients at the hospital could be cleansed of their diseases and sins. The altarpiece is marked by extreme emotional intensity, brought about by expressive distortion and by colouring of an extraordinary incandescent beauty. Grünewald was familiar with Renaissance ideas of perspective, but spiritually he belongs to the late medieval world. His other work includes Crucifixions in Basle (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung), Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle), and Washington (NG), and several drawings survive.

The end of Grünewald's career was marked by a decline in his fortunes. He had Protestant sympathies, and following the Peasants' War, in which Archbishop Albrecht's palace was besieged, he left his service and moved to Frankfurt. There he made a meagre living at a variety of jobs, including selling artists' colours and a curative balm, the latter presumably something he had learnt about at Isenheim. In 1527 he became convinced his life was in danger and fled to Halle, where he died of plague the following year. His effects included ‘much Lutheran trash’. Although his influence can be seen in the paintings of contemporaries such as Baldung Grien and Ratgeb, it was not until the advent of Expressionism in the early 20th century that his work started to arouse widespread interest and he began his rise to his present pinnacle of esteem as one of the most awe-inspiring artists of his, or any other, time.