Angel collecting blood from the wounds of Christ

An image made out of the aftermath

The title describes an angel gathering the blood from the wounds. Nothing of the kind is narrated in the gospels, which give the wound in the side and then move to the burial. The motif comes from devotional practice: the blood is collected because it is the matter of the sacrament, and the angel performs the collection that the liturgy performs at the altar.

Its position relative to the cycle

Immediately after the Crucifixion in logic, and nowhere in it in time. This is the same territory as the dead Christ supported by angels, or the Man of Sorrows: subjects assembled out of the Passion for use at an altar, where the question of what hour it is has been set aside on purpose.

What the record holds

The catalogue names Lorenzo Lotto, dates the work to 1543, and places it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. It measures 32 x 50 cm — small and horizontal, a shape that fits above or below a larger panel rather than standing alone, though the record does not say that it did. The style is entered as High Renaissance and the artist as Italian. The subject fields class the work as religious, with no figure classification. The measured palette reads as ochre.