Blood of Christ

Carlo Crivelli's Blood of Christ, painted around 1490 and now in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, is a devotional image of intense emotional power depicting the dead Christ with his blood. The eucharistic imagery—linking Christ's blood to the wine of communion—was central to Counter-Reformation devotion. Crivelli's characteristically sharp, precise style gives the scene an almost hallucinatory intensity appropriate to its meditative devotional purpose.

Crivelli renders the suffering Christ with his characteristically hard, precise outlines and sharp anatomical detail, using the contrast between the pale flesh and vivid blood to create a devotional image of concentrated emotional intensity.