Matthias Grünewald's 'Isenheim Altarpiece' (1512–1516), painted for the hospital chapel of the Antonite monastery at Issenheim in Alsace, is the summit of late-Gothic German painting and the most harrowing depiction of the Crucifixion in Western art. Closed, it shows the dead Christ against a black sky, his body covered in sores evocative of the plague, syphilis, and ergotism the hospital's patients actually suffered; opened, successive wings reveal the Annunciation, a celestial concert of angels, and the radiant Resurrection. Since 1852 it has been the central permanent display at the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, where it is presented as a unified ensemble of unparalleled religious intensity.

Exhibition Venue

Unterlinden Museum

Colmar, France