Christ as the Suffering Redeemer

Andrea Mantegna worked on the Christian art of Christ as the suffering redeemer between 1495 and 1500 when he was in Rome.

This Christian art was intended to be for a certain private apartment .The painting tells about the resurrection of Christ as is written in the Gospel of Saint Luke. This was a challenging art as the Italian artist tried to put two events in one portrait. The background of the portrait where he uses colourful paint is about the story in St Luke. The foreground is where he created the image of Christ coincides with a biblical event where the women had come with spices that they had prepared for the body of Christ.

In the painting Andrea Mantegna used egg tempera on panel a technique that most of the then artist had outgrown and were using oil paintings. The technique he used come out so well showing how he had mastered his painting skills. The image of Christ who had just resurrected being held by two angles is clearly shown in this painting. Christ who is seen with five wounds: shows how he had suffered and died for Christian sins: seem to be praising his creator. In the image of Christ Mantegna high skills in painting is shown by how the white linens in the art can be differentiated.

On the background where the angles are seen supporting the resurrected Christ Mantegna puts fine lines on their wings and halos and he also uses magnifying classes that have been exiting from 1200 to incorporate the tiny miniatures. To make the portrait more detailed on the rosettes he uses gold paint. The simple materials he used in this painting made his work different from other painters. To create a moment of monumentality he lowered the horizon of the art then incorporated stony figures on the metallic landscape.

Mantegna work on the sculpture of Christ as the suffering redeemer was a fine sarcophagus work that showed how he was talented in art. Mantegna work is different from that of Titian an artist who painted Giovanni Bellini portrait and whom they had few years between. After this art he was asked to create the tomb of Barbara of Brandenburg but this did not come to pass. To date the portrait of Christ as the suffering redeemer by Mantegna is in Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen in Denmark.