Pre Painkillers Isenheim Altarpiece Helped Dying People In Middle Ages

Thanks to Rick Steves and his Travel Insider:



All these centuries as a political shuttlecock have given Alsace a hybrid culture. And the city of Colmar is a great home base to experience it. Long popular with French and German tourists, this well-pickled old town of 70,000 is often overlooked and underrated by overseas travelers.
During World War II, the American and British military were careful not to bomb quaintly cobbled Colmar. Today Colmar not only survives, it thrives with 15th- and 16th-century buildings, distinctive cuisine and rich art treasures.
Colmar's Unterlinden Museum gets my vote as the best small museum in Europe (www.musee-unterlinden.com). It fills a 750-year-old former convent with exhibits ranging from Roman artifacts to medieval winemaking, and from traditional wedding dresses to paintings that give vivid insight into the High Middle Ages.
Matthias Grunewald's gripping Isenheim Altarpiece, showing a gruesome crucifixion, is the museum's most important work. Germans know this painting like Americans know the Mona Lisa. The altarpiece was commissioned 500 years ago by a monastery hospital filled with people suffering terrible skin diseases - a common cause of death back then. The hospital's goal, long before the age of painkillers, was to remind patients that Jesus understood their suffering. The many panels led patients through a series of Bible stories culminating with a reassuring Resurrection scene.