I have created this category for a pair of unusual images that contemplate Christ in his perfected body engaging the eyes of the viewer. The first is from the sixteenth century:
Antonio da Correggio, The Redeemer, 1523-25, Pinacoteca Vaticana. See the description page for more details.
Here Christ exhibits his perfected body to the viewer, whose gaze he engages. The body is an assurance of the perfection promised in I Corinthians for the body of one who has died in Christ (see text at right). The painting thus exhibits both "the Redeemer" and a pictorial expression of the nature of redemption itself.
The other image is from the seventeenth century:
El Greco, Christ the Savior, 1602-10. See the description page for details.
Like the Correggio, this painting presents a perfected Christ engaging the viewer's gaze in great calm. The hands are unmarked by the Crucifixion and present an assurance of salvation, the right giving a traditional blessing and the left resting peacefully on a globe of the earth. The background, a barely differentiated black, puts the figure on the spiritual plane while the clothing recalls Christ's earthly body: a blue mantle like his human mother's and a red robe like those El Greco pictures in Passion paintings such as this one:
El Greco, The Disrobing of Christ, 1577-79. For details, see the description page
Prepared in 2019 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University.
I Corinthians 15:40-44a,49: And there are bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial: but, one is the glory of the celestial, and another of the terrestrial. One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.… Therefore as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly.
