A concert inside a crucifixion

The recorded title places this entry twice: it is a Concert of Angels, and it is a detail from the left Crucifixion panel of a larger altarpiece. Those two statements pull in opposite directions. A concert is a chorus at leisure; a Crucifixion is the opposite kind of scene. What the entry actually describes is a zone of a structure rather than a picture with a subject, and the catalogue records the zone as the record gives it.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates this entry to 1515 and gives Matthias Grünewald, filed as German and Northern Renaissance. The measured colour families are brown and red. No location is recorded for this entry and no dimensions are recorded — both consistent with a detail, since the measurement that exists belongs to the panel and not to the part of it described here.

Seven details, one catalogue

Seven entries on this site announce themselves as details, and five of the seven name the Isenheim Altarpiece. That concentration changes what a catalogue of angelic rank can do. An entry for a whole picture can be sorted by what its angels are doing; an entry for a fragment can only be sorted by where in the structure it sits. Musician angels in an altarpiece sit at the bottom of the arrangement, so a detail of them is in effect an entry for the lowest visible tier — which is where the tradition put the only order that has anything to do with human beings.