El retablo de Isenheim: religión, arte y medicina

Abstract

The Isenheim altarpiece: religion, art and medicine Northern Europe at the beginning of the 16 th Century was in turmoil as a result of religious and political dissention, epidemics of plague, syphilis, ergotism, and famine, and the threat of the Ottoman Empire. In Alsace, a fulcrum between Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, Grünewald painted his celebrated and complex altarpiece at Isenheim in a convent chapel of the Anto-nine religious order that kept a hospital for the care of patients suffering from ergotism, plague, syphilis and other illnesses. The ten paintings of this altarpiece convey a series of religious, medical and political meanings, with the scenes of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection being thought to play an integral part of the curative process. This was because patients could be soothed by comparing their suffering to that of Christ on the cross and could console themselves by the Resurrection. The portrait of Christ in the cross is astounding in its realism and naturalism. It represents, with great pathological veracity, a tortured body in agony, a break with previous traditional representations of this event. Impressive pathological detail is also given to a figure in the Temptation scene. The entire work is suffused with religious connotations provided by the composition, the forms and the richness and sophisticated use of colors. Although Grünewald's paintings are few and the facts of his personal life sparse, it is known he married a Jewish woman, supported the peasant revolts, and was probably a Lutheran in a Catholic area. While Grünewald is considered the epitome of a German artist, the universal projections of his art have influenced physicians and the artistic productions of many painters, writers, musicians and sculptors throughout the world. E n los períodos de Semana Santa, en que las estaciones radiales saturan el espacio con la música de J. S. Bach, banalizándola, es importante recordar cuanta originalidad musical y profundidad religiosa el compositor situó en sus numerosas creaciones 1. Estas características de su obra se aprecian, por ejemplo, al escuchar los versos del coro de la Pasión según San Juan "Señor nuestro Dios (Herr!, unser Herrscher)", que con el sombrío trasfondo musical de los oboes y de los violines, conmueve y ayuda a visualizar la Crucifixión de un cuerpo torturado 1. Esta sección musical, según algunos musicólogos trasuntaría una relación dialéctica entre los dolientes que presencian la Crucifixión y la del hombre en la cruz mirando simultáneamente hacia la tierra y al cielo, con una mezcla de catástrofe y de triunfo, anunciando la futura Resurrección 1. Lo sombrío e inusual de la música Bachiana retrataría adecuadamente el sufrimiento del cuer-po de Cristo, lacerado y goteando sangre, que es elevado clavo a clavo a la cruz, teniendo solamente