Mantegna’s Christ can be seen as representing this progression of material human qualities to

Mantegna’s Christ can be seen as representing this progression of material human qualities to deified symbolic content. Thus the stigmata appear not as wounds of the flesh (as in Holbein) but rather as chips in a granite statue. Similarly while the white cloth is starkly contrasted with the flesh of Holbein’s Christ, the shroud in ‘Lamentation’ is of almost the same hue as the flesh. The intricate detail of the folds reinforce Mantegna’s concern with line, as well as emphasising the phallus through its centrality and the heaviness of the drapery. This reformulation of Christ as damaged symbol suggests a significant departure from Holbein’s Humanist anatomical Christ. It also suggests a departure from the notion of Christ as the 'icon to end all icons’, described by Nietzsche as 'the most perfect symbol of all time.’[1] Rather it evokes a more nuanced approach to Christian iconography which Slavoj Žižek outlines. Žižek argues that in Judaism 'God has no face accessible to us. Christianity on the other hand, no longer needs this prohibition, because it knows that the face-image is an appearance.’[2] Thus the architectonic character of the work (its reference to other artistic, namely sculptural, forms) attests to the impossibility of a true representation of Christ whose 'mere appearance’ in artwork  can only ever be a stand-in for the transcendent Christ subject. Thus the sombre Christ is a more powerful religious icon then the facile grandeur of Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel which remains trapped within the logic of symbolic representation, and thus is unable to take into account the radical rupture of Christian theology.[1] Žižek, S. The Fragile Absolute, 2nd ed., United States: Verso, 2008. p. 95. and Nietzsche, F. Twilight of the Idols, 3rd Ed., England: Penguin Books, 2003.[2] Žižek, 2008, p. 95-6. -- source link

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