The body of Christ in the tomb
The body of Christ in the grave is a painting by the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger . The oil painting executed around 1521/22 on a linden wood panel shows the realistically depicted dead Christ in a stone grave niche in an almost life-size format (30.5 cm × 200 cm) . Originally presumably intended as an epitaph , the painting never made it to the intended installation site because of the Basel iconoclasm . The painting remained in the private possession of the family of the presumed client, Bonifacius Amerbach , whose art collection later formed the basis of the Basel Public Art Collection . It is exhibited today in the Kunstmuseum Basel .
Image description
In extreme landscape format, the picture shows a view into a stone wall niche just above eye level of the viewer. In it the body of Christ is depicted lying on a white linen cloth. The architecture of the niche suggests that the viewer should approach the painting from the left - only on the right side is the narrow side of the niche carved out of a rock, in which the date and signature can also be found.
The dead body, on the other hand, is based on a close view from the front and from the center of the picture, in which the viewer stands directly in front of the picture panel: the viewer sees Christ's feet “from above”, while his nose, mouth, chin and shoulders “from” below ”, while the right hand, placed exactly in the middle of the picture, holds the wound right in front of the viewer's eyes. The gaunt corpse, clad only in a loincloth, is depicted very realistically with open eyes and mouth, wounds on hand and feet and the side wound on the right costal arch. The skin color is pale, with a touch of green-gray on the hands, feet and face. The full brown hair, the right hand and the toes of the right foot protrude from the imaginary pictorial space of the wall niche.
Detail: main
Detail: hand
Detail: feet
The folds of the thin linen cloth on which the body is laid appear as if the corpse had only just been deposited there, and the scene, even through the eyes that are not yet closed, as in the transition, does not appear to be complete. The scene is bathed in a light falling from above, which basically contradicts the niche situation. Opinions differ as to whether the green-gray color of the head, hands and feet should be seen as a sign of the onset of decomposition (according to Bätschmann and Griener), or whether it is the result of a somewhat erratic shadow - the biblical description of the Passion story indicates rather towards the latter, since Jesus was buried on the same day immediately after he was deposed from the cross .
meaning
Obviously the painting refers to the Passion of Christ and the associated hope for salvation of the people. The realistic depiction emphasizes the incarnation of Christ, while the supernatural lighting gives a hint of the resurrection . The immediacy of the depicted scene, which almost invites the viewer to come closer and confront him with the protruding hand beyond the picture border, touches the viewer emotionally and makes him suffer and think about his own end. At the beginning of the 16th century, such representations, emotionally upsetting to the viewer, were seen by the church as being conducive to piety. The painting is comparable to the depiction of the agony of the crucified Christ in the Isenheim Altar by Matthias Grünewald , which was created between 1506 and 1515.
Origin of the picture
The date visible in the picture gives the year 1521 . However, the year was later changed to 1522 and this change was subsequently reversed. An anonymous silver pencil drawing that has been preserved shows that the cross-section of the niche was originally not rectangular, but rather a quarter circle, so that Holbein obviously reworked the painting afterwards and re-dated it, but later, presumably because the original picture invention or the commission came from this year. has reinserted the original year of origin.
Holbein had only recently received Basel citizenship in 1520 and caused a sensation there with the facade painting of the house "zum Tanz" . Holbein had already made a portrait of the presumed client of the representation of Christ, the Basel lawyer Bonifacius Amerbach , in 1519, but in the following years worked primarily as a draftsman and illustrator with designs for Basel book printers and publishers as well as glass painters . In 1521 he was commissioned with the extensive painting of the large council hall of the Basel town hall , shortly afterwards in 1522 the commission for the Solothurn Madonna followed .
According to an unproven legend, Holbein used a corpse recovered from the Rhine as an object of study for the painting.
Planned installation site
_-_Portrait_of_Bonifacius_Amerbach.jpg)
It is not known where the painting was originally intended to be placed. The format suggests that it was a predella , on the other hand it is difficult to imagine how the other components of a winged altar could have been brought into line with the depiction of the corpse in perspective. It is conceivable that the picture should form the background or front end of a holy grave niche in a church or chapel or that it was intended as an independent altarpiece . The more recent art historical research assumes that the painting was intended as part of an epitaph for a burial chapel .
The burial chapel of the Amerbach family in the small cloister of the Basel Charterhouse is an obvious place of installation. Bonifacius Amerbach began planning an epitaph for his family in this location in 1519 after his brother Bruno Amerbach died of the plague. The father Johannes Amerbach , who died in 1513, had already donated an altar for the cloister and was buried in the cloister together with his wife. Bonifacius Amerbach began correspondence with Beatus Rhenanus around 1519 , who was supposed to advise him on the drafting of the text for the tablet. Amerbach seems to have already acquired the planned stone slab at this point in time, because the text also seems to have been conceived with regard to its size and format.
This connection is supported by the fact that the dimensions of the painting correspond exactly to the dimensions of the stone tablet (without frame), which there is reminiscent of the Amerbach family. In the planned installation, the viewer would have approached the painting from the left and then viewed it at close range. In fact, the painting was never placed there. The grave memorial for Johannes Amerbach, his wife Barbara and their son Bruno Amerbach and four other family members, who have since died, was only installed in 1544 with the stone tablet in the small cloister of the Charterhouse, where it is still located today. The temporary iconoclasm of the Basel Reformation made it seem unwise to also display the depiction of Christ crucified there. The painting remained in the Amerbach family's private rooms and it is not known whether it was merely kept there or also shown.
Provenance
The painting initially remained in the family possession of the Amerbach family and became part of the Amerbach cabinet compiled by Basilius Amerbach , a private collection of art, coins and writings. The good state of preservation speaks against the fact that the picture was put up in a public place and removed because of the iconoclasm or was otherwise exposed to more frequent transports. In any case, in 1587 the painting is recorded in the inventory of Basilius Amerbach as Ein todten Bild Holbein's vf holtz with oil paints , with the additional marginal note: cum titulo Iesus Nazarenus rex J (udaeorum) . The city and university of Basel acquired the Amerbach cabinet from the family in 1661, which formed the basis for the university library and several Basel museums. The painting has since been owned by the Basel Public Art Collection and is on display at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
reception
The painting appeared to many viewers with a mixture of fascination and shock and was repeatedly imitated into the 19th century. In 1867 the sight is said to have brought the Russian poet Dostoyevsky to the brink of an epileptic seizure in the Basel Art Museum. Dostoevsky later processed the episode in his novel The Idiot , where he made one of the protagonists, looking at a copy of the painting, say that the body of Christ in the tomb has the power to extinguish faith.
The theological message of the painting is still relevant to the Catholic Church today. In his encyclical Lumen fidei , published in 2013, Pope Francis wrote about the painting: “The painting depicts in a very drastic way the destructive effect of death on the body of Christ. And yet it is precisely in contemplating the death of Jesus that faith is strengthened and received a shining light when it proves to be a belief in Jesus' unshakable love for us, capable of going to death to save us. One can believe in this love, which did not evade death to show how much it loves me; its totality is beyond suspicion and allows us to entrust ourselves fully to Christ ”.
literature
- Christian Müller: Holbein's painting “The Body of Christ in the Grave” and the burial chapel of the Amerbach family in the Basel Charterhouse . In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History. 58, 2001, pp. 279-289 ( online ).
- Kunstmuseum Basel: Hans Holbein the Elder J. The years in Basel 1515–1532. Prestel, Munich et al. 2006, ISBN 3-7913-3581-2 .
- Oskar Bätschmann / Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein . DuMont, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7701-3923-2 .
- Herbert von Eine : Holbein's "Christ in the Grave" (= treatises of the humanities and social sciences class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Born in 1960, No. 4).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Hans Holbein d. J. - The years in Basel . In: Kunstmuseum Basel (ed.): Exhibition catalog . Prestel, Munich 2006, p. especially 257-259 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g Christian Müller: Holbein's painting “The Body of Christ in the Grave” and the burial chapel of the Amerbach family in the Basel Charterhouse . In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History . tape 58 , 2001, p. 279-289 .
- ↑ a b c d Oskar Bätschmann / Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein . DuMont, Cologne 1997, p. 88 ff .
- ↑ facade painting at the house to dance at sandrart.net
- ↑ so z. B. Andreas Cratander , Johann Froben , Adam Petri
- ^ Web Gallery of Art, searchable fine arts image database. In: www.wga.hu. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .
- ↑ Bourgeois Orphanage Basel | Cloister. In: www.waisenhaus-basel.ch. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .
- ↑ Kunstmuseum Basel | Kunstmuseum Basel | History. In: www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .
- ↑ Lumen fidei (June 29, 2013) | Francis. In: w2.vatican.va. Retrieved February 28, 2016 .