Matthias Grünewald - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Matthias Grünewald (litt. “Green Forest”, of its true name probably Mathis Gothart Nithart ), probably born with Würzburg, in Bavaria, v. 1475 - 1480 and died in Market, in Saxony-Anhalt, 1528, was a painter and hydraulic engineer German of the Renaissance, contemporary of Albrecht Dürer.

Biography

Identity of the painter

The identity of “Matthias Grünewald” remains dubious. This name was given to him, in a rather arbitrary way, by Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688), “the Giorgio Vasari German”, which, after approximately a century of lapse of memory quasi-total of the name if not work, the redécouvre and speaks about it in its bulky Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (Encyclopédie of the architects, sculptors and painters German) of 1675. One knows several types of signatures besides to him - MGN with G in M, and NR side; MGN with G in M, and NR superimposed; MG with G in M and Mathis - - which added to confusion around its name: it was called Gothart - - piles - called Neithart - sorrow - - or the reverse? On the documents which remain us attesting of its contracts of hydraulic engineer for the court of the young person Archevêché of Mainz, (1490-1545) or, before, of the archbishop Uriel von Gemmingen of Aschaffenbourg, it is sometimes called Gothart, sometimes Neithart. These same contracts show besides that its competences of engineer were to be included/understood in the broad sense, because in addition to boring of a well and installation of a pump, it was also in charge of the rebuilding of the hearth.

Because of existence of a Mathis Grün which was contemporary for him (death in 1532) it was supposed a long time, on the basis of name forged by Sandrart, which Grünewald truth was that one, but Mathis Grün was a sculptor and no sculpture forever who been able to be allotted with certainty to known as Grünewald. The carved part of the Retable of Issenheim, its masterpiece, is hand of Nicolas de Haguenau (with collaboration of workshop) and dates from the years 1480, which is manifest besides from the stylistic point of view, resolutely Pre-Rebirth.

Although the name of the author of the retable painted for the Convent - hospital of the Moines antonins of Issenheim had fallen into the lapse of memory rather quickly, its fame of artist, very large during his life - its legacy, which comprised several coats of fur-lined coat and fabric of quality as well as a material of painting of very first choice, testifies to a material fortune some -, had hardly faded, though one allotted the paternity of his work, during a time, with Albrecht Dürer.

The question of the self-portrait

With regard to the birth date of the painter, the first historians of art who tried to reconstitute his life, whose pioneer Heinrich Alfred Schmid, rather located it between 1455 ( terminus post quem ) and 1460, while to leave the years 1970, the idea of Grünewald born before 1483 ( terminus handle quem ), proposed rather quickly it also, gradually was essential.

In all the cases, the dates suggested were it on the basis of considerations stylistics and iconographic as well as very complex question of the self-portrait. To summarize this one, it was supposed, on the basis of drawing of its feather on the one hand and one self-portrait to the oil of a young unknown artist preserved at Stockholm on the other hand, that Grünewald is or represented itself under the features of the Saint Sebastien of the retable of Issenheim, older double of the self-portrait

- resemblance confirmed by a radiographic examination of the retable carried out in 1974, which showed that the identity of the two faces was even clearer before the final final improvements -, or under the features of the holy Paul of the same work, very near to the character represented on the drawing: towards 1515, therefore, and to judge painting, Grünewald consequently of it would have been either thirty year brown with the nose rounded, or a fair quinquagénaire with the blue eyes, the pointed nose. This contradiction was not arranged by the fact that Sandrart illustrates its presentation of “Matthias Grünewald” of reproductions of like other of the two faces, supposed representing the young artist, then old. As it is known that Sandrart forever considering the retable of Isenheim - it saw, and in its youth only, the works disappeared meanwhile from Frankfurt and Mainz as well as original drawings in possession of a Roman collector - and that the biography which he proposes is highly whimsical and lacunar, to give birth to the painter with a more or less precise date according to the age supposed from a character who is not itself that calculation appears completely hazardous today: it was however about the single track followed by several generations of historians of the art which, bringing closer the painter to his contemporary Albrecht Dürer, were convinced that he had had him-also well to represent some share in his work.

A certain type of face, that of the drawing and the Paul saint, characterized by his eyes out of almond, its pointed nose, certain mollesse of the mouth and a more or less accentuated torsion of the nape of the neck, returning unceasingly in the painting of the Master, it was certainly supposed that it was about as many self-portraits. But by looking at all these faces as a whole, it is difficult to find a primarily common character to them, more especially as they are often two different characters inside the same table: the Holy Georges or the Holy Christophe of the retable of Lindenhardt, and even the Christ and the “man with the turban” in the Derision of Christ . Since the years 1990, one returned from there to an assumption which was already that of the large historian of art Wilhelm Fraenger in the years 1930: Grünewald, which hardly maintained correspondence and no autobiographical writing left, would actually have been represented nowhere in its painted or drawn corpus.

Work

One allots today with certainty to Matthias Grünewald ten works several of them polyptyques and 35 drawings, distributed in European and American collections. Its first uncontested fabric is moving it Christ insult , going back to 1503, preserved at the Alte Pinakothek of Munich, which is very close to the painting of the late Gothic in the valley of the Rhine. Its most famous work is the Retable of Issenheim, showpiece of the collections of the Musée of Unterlinden of Colmar.

Pictorial universe

The work of Grünewald, exclusively religious as well in what survived as in what is attested by testimonys, belongs at the time of transition between the Gothic late and the Renaissance, and is marked by a mysticism which touches sometimes with the hallucination. One detected a symbolism resulting there straight of the visions of holy Brigitte of Sweden, then very read. The wealth of strange scenes, full with details hardly comprehensible and transcended by a technique dazzling as well at the level of the finished chromatic one as with returned volumes, reliefs and surfaces, is accompanied by a very free and perfectly disconcerting management by the prospects and reports/ratios for size which increase the effect of it. This Dichotomie between technique and construction of the space, which culminates in the central panel of the Retable of Issenheim, of which the left part is commonly called the Concert of the angels , could be explained in a relatively coherent way only once redécouverts the writings of this mystical Swedish, about at the time of elsewhere where Fraenger redécouvre the “Marteau of the witches” to reinterpret Jerome Bosch, artist with whom one sometimes compared Grünewald for the richness of imaginary fantastic and the fascination of cruelty, without however why there is though it is of commun run between the Flemish meticulous, gracious and in the tradition of the broad plan and the German definitely more physical and plastic, especially at ease in the close-up. But Grünewald is especially famous for its poignant visions of the suffering of the Christ, before all her crucifixions, four - Basle, Washington DC, Colmar and Karlsruhe -, to which its Dérision of Christ (Munich) and her Portement of cross (Karlsruhe) only yields it very little in terms of emphase and raw violence.

It is on the level of the crucifixions that the stylistic and mystical progression of the artist in any case seems easiest to observe: crucifixion of Basle to that of Karlsruhe, in one period of approximately twenty-two years, the tortured body of Jesus, his crown of spines, the nails which bore it, its Périzonium becomes increasingly enormous, while the cross folds more and more under its weight. The majority of the historians of art agree to see there a progression continuous and regular on great time intervals, some however brought closer the crucifixions much to Washington and Colmar; it is uncontested that the crucifixion preserved at Basle is for its part an early work. This work presents some similarities stylistics with work of Hans Holbein Old the, which made conclude that Grünewald had been able to work a time in the workshop of this one. Pierre Vaisse supposes in addition that Grünewald had been able to see the Burgundian sculptures of Claus Sluter, whose expressive and tormented style would have influenced it. Other historians of art, like Heinrich Zülch, believe in addition that it would have gone on a journey in Italy, like the majority of the painters of its time, which would have resulted in the visible landscape by the window behind the “Saint-Sebastien” or the Roman panorama of the “Miracle of Snows” of the museum of Freiburg-in-Brisgau. It is in any case certain that a constant of the work of Grünewald is the lack of space depth of its tables: of the “Cène”, first table still awkward but already not very conventional by the provision and the gestural one of the Apostle S with the retable of “Saint Érasme and Saint Maurice”, dazzling of technique, the characters seem to overlap. The frequent use of a bottom sinks and the concentration on the gestural one reinforces this impression.

Gallery 1: evolution of Christs in cross

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