Segensspendung (Verehrung der Eucharistie)

Segensspendung — the Bestowal of Blessing or Veneration of the Eucharist — from around 1496, in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, depicts a liturgical subject related to the celebration of Mass and the exposition or adoration of the consecrated host. Such images accompanied altarpieces in chapels dedicated to the Corpus Christi devotion, which was particularly strong in the towns of Upper Swabia in the late fifteenth century. Zeitblom's depiction of this liturgical moment places him within a tradition of eucharistic imagery that was doctrinally significant in the years before the Reformation controversy over the real presence.

Liturgical subjects required Zeitblom to render the material culture of the late medieval church — vestments, monstrances, architectural interiors — alongside the figures enacting the liturgy. The formal hierarchy of celebrant, attendant clergy, and laity is spatially encoded in the composition.