Gottfried Richter Livres

This survey of Western art from ancient Egypt to Picasso looks at visual art in a completely new and imaginative way. The lively and penetrating obser­vations will inspire and enthuse the novice, while breathing new life into the thinking of art critics and historians. Gottfried Richter concerns himself broadly with architecture, sculpture, and painting―as well as mythology and legend―in pre­senting the creations of artist and architect as an expression of the evolution of human consciousness. In vivid images he offers the reader interpretive keys to under­stand this process in all areas of art history. With many examples the author illustrates how human life has undergone a qualitative transfor­mation as humanity has gradually freed itself from a life determined by spiritual guidance in order to take hold of the sensory world and experience free individuality.

Grunewald is generally regarded as the greatest painter of the German Renaissance, and his masterpiece, "The Isenheim Altar" in Colmar, as one of the great works of western art. Painted for the Order of Saint Anthony -- a monastic fraternity that cared for the sick and suffering humanity of the time -- Richter explains how the various panels of the altarpiece, and in particular the great central panels of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection, need to be seen as a unity that provoked in the observer a profound experience of the meaning of earthly suffering and the power of healing transformation. In an age when illness and disease were still seen as a result of 'the sickness of sin' that had befallen humanity, such a picture has a spiritual therapeutic effect on those exposed to it and gave them an inner strength to endure and triumph over their often painful and difficult destinies.

Dieses Buch möchte lehren, an den großen Kunstwerken abzulesen, wie die Menschen der verschiedenen Epochen sich selbst und die Welt erlebt haben. In diesem Sinne geht die Betrachtung von Ägypten und Mesopotamien über Kreta, Griechenland, Rom, das frühe Christentum, das Mittelalter, den Islam und die Geburt der Neuzeit, über Barock und Romantik bis in die Moderne.

In den Jahren nach 1512 schuf Matthias Grünewald für die Kirche des Antoniter-Spitals von Isenheim, einem kleinen Dorf am Rande der Vogesen, einen aufwendigen Wandelaltar, der dem Betrachter auf erschütternde Weise das Geheimnis von Christgeburt, Tod und Auferstehung nahebringt und auch heute noch uneingeschränkte Bewunderung verdient.