One word, three different jobs

The recorded title runs three subjects together because it describes a face of an altarpiece rather than a picture: an Annunciation, a Virgin and Child with angels, and a Resurrection. Angels appear across all three, and in each they do something different. In the first an angel announces — the most formal office in the tradition, and the one an archangel exists to perform. In the second, angels attend. In the third, the tradition's angel is a witness at a tomb. The same noun covers a herald, a retinue and a witness.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the entry to 1515 and gives Matthias Grünewald, filed as German and Northern Renaissance. The measured colour family is ochre. The recorded location is the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar. No dimensions are recorded, which is consistent with an entry describing one face of a folding structure rather than a single panel. The parenthesis in the title says as much outright: second face, wings open.

Why the wings matter to the ranks

A polyptych that opens shows different things on different days, and the angels change office when it does. Eight entries in this catalogue are filed under this painter and six name the Isenheim Altarpiece; together they are the largest group here devoted to one structure, and they make the point better than any single panel could. Rank is stable in doctrine and situational in practice.