The Greatest German?

Who was Germany's greatest painter? Half a century ago, the title would have been disputed among Albrecht Diirer, Lucas Cranach and Hans Holbein the Younger. Now Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born head of the History of Art Department at London University's Birkbeck College, unhesitatingly comes out for the 16th century Gothic master whom critics have long called Matthias Griinewald.

In a new comprehensive study of Griinewald (Abrams; $15), Critic Pevsner reproduces all that has been definitely identified as the painter's work, a mere 38 sketches and the whole or parts of ten altarpieces, including the Washington National Gallery's Crucifixion (TIME, July 18, 1955). Quite properly, 62 of the book's 143 plates are devoted to Griine-wald's twelve-paneled Isenheim altarpiece (now in Colmar's Unterlinden Museum), a work so famous it was mentioned in the Treaty of Versailles.

In the Isenheim, Griinewald (real name: Mathis Gothardt Niethardt) reached a peak in his ability to give body to the high mysticism and passionate urgency of his time. He rendered the Christ crucified as a scarred and broken figure, his lifeless head pierced with grotesque thorns. The attendant figures sustain and even amplify the sense of total horror and shock. The figure of Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross is modeled on Griinewald's ideal of Nordic beauty, with wildly flowing silky blonde hair, sumptuous, rippling salmon-pink robe and veil. Griinewald has painted beauty moved to the ultimate of grief; Mary Magdalene's delicate features are a frozen mask of sorrow, her fingers writhe numbly, and even the sleeves of her elegant gown appear twisted and rigid (see cut).

Critic Pevsner notes that "during precisely the years of the Isenheim altarpiece, Raphael painted the Sistine Madonna." He leaves no doubt that he considers one the equal of the other.

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