The Sudarium

Communion bread came in different shapes in Renaissance Europe, and this variety is particularly clear from depictions of the Last Supper, when Christ symbolically offers his body to his disciples. In this metalcut series on the life of Christ, the shape of the bread—the traditional Bretzel, or pretzel—betrays that the prints were made in Bavaria. While the handwritten text on the verso of the adjoining sheet in the booklet (once comprising nineteen metalcuts) does not mention the pretzel, it is handcolored in a warm, doughy yellow. A similar glow suffuses the head-on Sudarium at center, an unusually abstract inclusion for an image of the Passion.