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<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4">Short Essay Concerning
the Central Panel of Gr�newald's Isenheim</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
<font size="4">Altarpiece</font></font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Colmar, Unterlinden
Museum, Oil on Wood, c. 1515</font></p>
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<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Kate Robinson 2001</font></p>
<p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <i><font size="-1">�set
yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out for
him whom you love, For if you are to experience him or to see him at all,
insofar as it is possible her, it must always be in this cloud and this darkness�
</font></i></font></p>
<p align="right"><font size="-1"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
Cloud of Unknowing </font></i></font></p>
<p align="right"><font size="-1"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(Anon,
14th Century)</font></i></font></p>
<p align="center"><img src="Isenheim-1.jpg" width="227" height="200"></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There is an infinity of tangible
blackness in the sky of Gr�newald's painting of the Crucifixion for the Isenheim
Altarpiece. Darkness is the ground of the painting. It is the underlying chord;
more than a background, it is the base, the foundation, the dimension in which
the rest of the painting can be understood. Darkness is the space that the
protagonists inhabit. Pictorial depth is suggested by a low, flat, green horizon,
like a massive floating rock. Below the rock is more darkness before we see
the pebbly brown ground on which the characters, themselves, appear to stand
or float. The figures are at the very front of the picture space, in a line;
John the Baptist's toe touches the edge of the canvas, Mary Magdalene's dress
drapes along the edge of the frame. They are all thrust forward; they are
in our faces - seen in relation to that infinite sky and that low green hill.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And out of the deep dark floats
full-bellied Mary in a stone white dress. Her face is still, her eyes closed.
She's falling back in a dead faint into the arms of John. Her hands are clasped
before her, held out towards the crucified Christ, as though he is there in
the pressing of the palms of her hands, as though if she were to clasp Him
it would be her one line of life. Standing behind her, John forms a red halo
around Mary's stiffened white body. Together they form a Pieta, with the usual
roles of man and woman reversed. The face of John, looking on, is caught in
the very moment of the revelation of the depth of desolation of which he is
a participant. But Mary's loss is so deep inside, so internalised, already,
that there is no room left to show emotion in her face, which is passive as
though at peace or asleep or dead. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">John's left hand touches Mary's
elbow, and here we can see that underneath Mary's white garment, the cloth
nearest to her skin is as black as the sky. But over this in heavy folds is
her massive white robe, answering the sky in terms of light; only John the
Baptist's book, and the Lamb, has the same intensity of brightness. Thin lines
drawn into the surface of the cloth serve to give the huge billowing garment
form and weight: change the cloth into stone. The lines are a spiralling road
travelling upwards from Mary's floating base in darkness to encircle her head
thrust out into the extinction of the sky. The weight and the road of lines
on Mary's dress turn her into a toppling tower. And yet at the same time she
is like a huge white weightless amorphous buoyant cloud. Her body, held in
the arms of John, is both substantial and immaterial. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The luminosity of Mary is in contrast
to the sky. Christ's massive scarred head falls into the darkness towards
her. The weight of the sky is put upon her and she is bowed by it as though
her back is broken in two. We can see from the cloth closest to her skin that
she is acquainted with darkness. And yet the pallor of the insubstantial stone
of her outer garment, like the bright, white Lamb and the glowing book of
John, provide an alternative reading, another melody out of time with the
rest of the painting. 'Ilium oportet crescere me autem minui' - 'He must increase
while I decrease', says the inscription written in the sky behind the anachronistic
figure of John the Baptist, as he points across the picture space. Pointing
at whom? At Jesus? At John the Evangelist? At Mary? At the future and the
past contained within the swelling cloud of Mary's womb? The figure of John
echoes that of Gabriel in the scene of the Annunciation, on one of the interior
panels of the Isenheim altarpiece, in which Gabriel points emphatically at
Mary as she sits, a young girl, reading a passage of Isaiah from the Bible,
foretelling the birth of Christ. Is John, at the Crucifixion, announcing that
here inside this hour of deepest despair are the seeds of reversal? That birth
and death are wrapped in the same cloth? Christ's twisted fingers pierce the
sky above the Cross. In his tortured fingertips are the signs of life. Is
there, in the fragile strong brightness of the outer garment that shrouds
and protects Mary's inner darkness, a sign of hope?</font></p>
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