French Fall-Out Over Restoration of Isenheim Altarpiece

THE ART NEWSPAPERBy Vincent Noce

The Isenheim Altarpiece has been dismantled and moved because work is being carried out on the museum’s chapel

FRANCE---The unorthodox and unauthorised restoration in 2011 of a 16th-­century masterpiece, housed until recently in Colmar’s Musée Unterlinden, has divided experts and highlighted some glaring gaps in France’s management of its art treasures. The debate revolves around Mathias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, which has been compared to the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Created in the 1520s for the Antonite monastery, a ­hospice in nearby Isenheim for plague victims and sick peasants, the altarpiece is formed of seven painted wooden wings, folded around a gilded reliquary carved in Strasbourg by the sculptor Niclaus of Haguenau. [link]