Blood of the Redeemer

The muscular figure of the risen Christ possesses a monumentality that belies the painting’s small scale. Jesus’s blood spills from a wound in his side to fill the chalice at lower left. A central tenet of Catholicism is the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the belief that the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. This panel, among the first Italian paintings to enter the MFA, may have originally served as the door to a tabernacle that held sacramental wine and bread