SOURCE: Pettingell, Phoebe. “Old Masters of Suffering.” New Leader 85, no. 4 (July-August 2002): 33-5.

In the following excerpt, Pettingell commends Sebald's depiction of suffering and the fallibility of human reason and memory in After Nature.

W. H. Auden's much-anthologized poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” begins memorably, “About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters.” He had in mind the Gothic painters of Northern Europe's 16th century, like Mathias Grünewald, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Their straightforward depictions of human bodies in the throes of various agonies and degradations were a far cry from the glowing, idealized visions of the Italian Renaissance. These artists, most of whom endured times of extreme conflict, were only too familiar with the horrors they painted. They had seen atrocities committed in the name of religion, and had watched disfiguring, fatal plagues sweep through their countries. Often they...