Kopf Christi

Correggio painted this small panel around 1521, in his early thirties, just as he was starting the work in Parma that would make his name. The subject is the Veil of Veronica — the cloth a woman was said to have handed Christ to wipe his face on the road to his execution, which then kept the imprint of his features. Correggio shows that white cloth spread behind the head, Christ crowned with thorns and a glimpse of the purple robe of the mocking beneath. The face is built entirely out of soft gradations of light and shadow, with none of the hard outline of earlier painting, and that handling of light is exactly what he became famous for. The panel is now at the Getty in Los Angeles.