Thomas Burgkmair (d. 1523), The Mass of Saint Gregory (1496); oil on wood, 143.5 x 133 cm. Image source: Deutsches Historisches Museum, inv. no. Gm 93/77.
Adrien Ysenbrandt (1510 - 1550),
The
Mass of Saint Gregory. Oil on panel
14 1/4 x 11 1/2 in. Image source:
The
Getty Museum.
The Mass of Saint Gregory
The legend of the Mass of Saint Gregory ranks among the most widespread themes of late medieval religious iconography and illustrates the intense and growing popularity of observances that emphasized the corporeal humanity of the incarnate God. According to church legend, the pope Gregory I (540-604) was approached during the rite of communion at the church of Santa Croce in Rome by a baker-woman who that morning had delivered the Eucharist bread. When Gregory handed her a communion wafer, saying:
"May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ benefit
you until life everlasting," she laughed as if at a joke. He immediately
drew back his hand from her mouth and laid the consecrated Host on
the altar and then, before the whole assembly, asked her why she dared
to laugh. Her answer: "Because you called this bread, which I made
with my own hands, the Body of the Lord." Then Gregory, faced with
the woman's lack of belief, prostrated himself in prayer, and wen
he rose, he found the particle of bread changed into flesh in the
shape of a finger. Seeing this, the woman recovered her faith. Then
he prayed again, saw the flesh return to the form of bread, and gave
communion to the woman [1].
 This
is the version fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europeans encountered
in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, one of the most
widely
read texts of the late Middle Ages. According to other versions of the
story, the wafer transforms into a bloody chunk of flesh. The story,
and
the images that attend it, were meant to dispel doubts about
transubstantiation
-- the miraculous transformation of communion bread and wine into the
body
and blood of Christ -- and to assert the necessity of papal authority
for
the effective performance of this rite. |
Visual representations of the Mass of Saint Gregory began to appear in the early fourteenth century and reached their widest dispersion during the second half of the fifteenth century in conjunction with the increasingly popular cult of the Bleeding Host and other Eucharistic observances. In Thomas Burgkmair's depiction of the Mass, the communion wafer takes the shape of the crucified Christ, Man of Sorrows. Among the many versions of the legend, this was by far the most frequently rendered in painting. Burgkmair adopts an almost abstract, a front-on perspective and places Pope Gregory to one side as he utters the words Hoc est enim corpus meum. Christ emerges from a coffin that has materialized on the altar; a burial shrowd (or "Veronica") is draped over its edge below him; the stark church interior is decorated with the paraphernalia of Christ's betrayal and crucifixion.
In his rendition of the legend, Adrien Ysenbrandt places Pope Gregory in an elaborately detailed cathedral, in the company of candlebearers draped in ornate damask chasubles. As Gregory pronouces the words , Christ materializes above the altar, surrounded by instruments of his Passion, his stigmata displayed to the assembled churchmen.
Ysenbrandt used gold-colored paint liberally to describe decorative candlesticks, censers, goblets, and the fine liturgical vestments. The church's ornate interior was rendered in crisp detail. In contrast, the figure's faces were softly and loosely painted, giving their features a blurred effect.
[1] Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:179-180.