ABSTRACT
This chapter plots the juncture of Philippine Eucharistic visual, material and ritual culture and interpolative hagio-historiography, against Counter-Reformation Eucharistic culture, taking Rubens' second Chiesa Nuova high altarpiece as a case study. It then brings to bear sources, objects, images, and arguments from previous chapters, while attending to 2's particular and particularly enmeshed sacramental, ritual, material, and martyrial dimensions. Some studies of Rubens' altarpiece mention the work's Eucharistic implications in passing. Philippine Eucharistic iconography, in conjunction with the written record, established a symbolic visual synonymity between the splendor surrounding Neri's head or body, and the resplendent divine presence in the Santissimo Sacramento. Version 2 juxtaposed splendor and obscurity, its figures seemingly emerging from the shadowy absconding confines of the Vallicella apse and the dark slate support, illuminated by the illusionistic glory emanating from behind the Madonna della Vallicella.
