The Blood of the Redeemer

This is an early work by Giovanni Bellini, painted in Venice around the 1460s in tempera on a small wooden panel. A young Christ stands holding his cross while an angel kneels to catch the blood from his side in a chalice, the same cup used at Mass, which tells us what the picture was for. It very likely served as the little door of a tabernacle, the locked box on an altar where the consecrated bread was kept. Look past the figures and the low wall behind them carries carved reliefs in the ancient Roman manner, all fauns and pagan rites. That taste for antiquity had reached Bellini through his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, who had married into the family and was steeped in the classical world.