The Blood of the Redeemer

The relief depicts the Saviour amid a host of angels, who are carrying or accompanying him as well as displaying the cross and chalice. The angels make an exuberant impression, lending the relief a compositional ease and lightness that contrasts with the visual content. This was Sansovino’s variation on a theme that was widespread in votive images, especially in the Northern Italian painting. The earliest record of this composition is to be found in the expense accounts of the painter Lorenzo Lotto, who in 1542 bought a plaster cast which he apparently put up as a private altar flanked by two statuettes representing true faith and heresy. Shortly afterwards, Lotto used the composition in a painting of similar format, documented in 1543, which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.