Mantegna's Meditation on the Sacrifice of Christ: His Synoptic Savior

Abstract

Unique in its vantage-point, Mantegna's canvas popularly known as the Foreshortened Christ is evidently opposed to orthodox perspectival correctness. Far from conventional in its construction, the image places special emphasis upon Christ's wounds in accord with devotional practices and values of the later Middle Ages. Just as canvas' painter is so often close to the Northern esthetic, he is here equally near later Northern spirituality, though the latter is tied to early Christian and medieval sources. In terms of the focal point of the image, its patronage and subsequent ownership, this curiously, expressionistically condensed vista should be understood synoptically, in the sense that the wounds are given a novel collectivity, their sequence allowing for a phylogeny and ontogeny recapitulating the shedding of Christ's blood.