The Small Crucifixion

Grünewald (born Mathis Gothart Nithart, active primarily in the German-speaking Rhineland) painted this panel in the first two decades of the sixteenth century, a period of profound religious ferment that preceded and overlapped with Luther's Reformation. Unlike his contemporaries Dürer and Cranach, Grünewald worked almost entirely within the tradition of German Late Gothic expressionism, resisting the Italianate Renaissance current that was reshaping northern European art. The Small Crucifixion, now held in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel, is closely related in conception to his monumental Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1512–1516), which was painted for an Antonite monastery hospital where patients suffering from ergotism encountered its grotesque, compassionate imagery. The Basel panel shares that altarpiece's insistence on depicting Christ's suffering as bodily, visceral, and complete. Art historians have long noted that Grünewald's work disappeared almost entirely from critical awareness for nearly three centuries before being rediscovered in the early twentieth century, when Expressionist painters, particularly the Die Brücke group, recognized in him a spiritual predecessor. His reputation today rests on fewer than ten authenticated paintings, making each panel a rare and concentrated document of one of the most singular visions in the history of Christian art.