Saint Francis Collecting the Blood of Christ

The background of this small painting opens out into a landscape with a castle, beyond an arch. A bare tree and a porphyry column allude respectively to Christ’s death and his Flagellation. Against the column rest tools of the Passion; others – the nails, the crown of thorns and the scourges – hang from the arm of the cross borne by Christ. The Redeemer opens the wound in his ribcage from which streams the blood that Saint Francis is collecting in a golden cup. The theme of the collection of Christ’s blood is very rare in the fifteenth century. It is likely that here it is related to a renewal of the devotion to the holy blood supported by some mendicant Orders, and that the painting was commissioned by a Franciscan friar. The work was intended for private devotion.