Frontispiece: De Imitatione Christi, Libri IV

The sudarium (or Veronica’s veil) was a cloth venerated for the mark left upon it when Christ used it to wipe his sweaty brow on the final road to Calvary. Because it was simultaneously a testament to his life on earth and miraculous evidence of divine will, this relic constituted proof of Christ’s dual nature as both man and God. As a trace of an original, the sudarium was also, in some senses, the first sacred print. In this engraved frontispiece to a book "On the Imitation of Christ," a worshipper has been persuaded to put down his arms and riches to kneel before the emblems of Christ’s humility and suffering.