Abraham and Melchisédech

Konrad Witz's Abraham and Melchisedech, from the Heilsspiegelaltar painted around 1435, depicts the meeting between the patriarch and the priest-king of Salem. This scene was interpreted as a prefiguration of the Eucharist, with Melchisedech's offering of bread and wine anticipating Christ's institution of the sacrament. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The encounter between the two Old Testament figures displays Witz's characteristic emphasis on physical weight and material texture, with the bread and wine prominent as eucharistic symbols rendered with naturalistic precision.