How is northern art characterized by a preoccupation with death and an interest in the supernatural? What are some of the causes of this preoccupation?
What will be an ideal response?
Following the Black Death of 1348 and numerous subsequent plagues northern Europeans were acutely aware of the fragility of life and the ultimate horror of death. Texts such as the Art of Dying Well were popular devotional reading.
Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (Fig. 16.13 ) is a prime example of the northern European artistic fixation on death and morbidity. The Altarpiece was commissioned for a Hospital for skin diseases. Since physical illness was equated with spiritual illness, the stark realism of the Altarpiece was intended to occasion repentance.
Another preoccupation of North was an interest in the supernatural and magic. Between 1400 and 1700, 70,000 to 100,000 people were sentenced to death for harmful magic. Works like Krämer's Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches) (Reading 16.2) spurred these witch trials, while other works like Grien's Witches' Sabbath (Fig. 16.15) presented a chilling portrayal of the their misdeeds.
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