Il Pastura, Triptych with Eucharistic Miracle, an Assumption Legend, & St. Jerome

1497
Tempera on wood panel
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

The panel on the left uses the iconography of Eucharistic miracles patterned on the "Mass of St. Gregory" tradition. A tonsured priest stands before an altar and prepares to lift the host, an action customarily accompanied by the acolyte's lifting the tail of the chasuble. Some image(s) from the iconography of the Passion appear on the area behind and above the altar, in this case a Man of Sorrows. Literary accounts of these miracles often have blood dripping from the host onto the corporal, a white cloth placed below the host to catch any stray particles but I have not yet found any images that show this. The priest shown here has a halo, so he could be St. Gregory. The addition of an image of the Madonna and Child below the Man of Sorrows is unusual in this iconographic type.

In the central panel St. Thomas has gratefully received the belt of the Virgin Mary. This episode is explained in this section of my essay on the Assumption.

The right panel pictures St. Jerome as a penitent hermit. Like the left panel, it closely follows the traditional iconography for this type: the rocky environment, the rock in his hand and bruise on his chest, the lion, the skull, the crucifix, the red hat. Only the height of the crucifix departs from the tradition. View this image in full resolution.
Read more about St. Thomas and about The Assumption

Photographed at the Pinacoteca Vaticana by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.