Through the analysis of some pictorial pieces from the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance which depict the event of Christ’s baptism in the waters of the Jordan, the contribution introduces the theme of the body of Christ as an object psychically charged by the desire of the faithful to perceive it sensorially. The construction of a simple but effective pictorial device shows that artists have posed from time to time the problem of how to represent the unfigurable mystery of God’s corporeality, through the ritual evocation of his death. Christ’s promise to the faithful of a new life after the earthly end is also at the heart of the effectiveness of the devotional images used in the practice of “meditative immersion”. The “image of vesper” that spreads from the German area, offers to the faithful a key to access the mystical content of the Resurrection through the empathic sphere. For this reason, the “body of the image” acquires a double semantic value, as an object of representation and as a subject that activates a “miracle of vision” in contemplation, through the material with which it is presented. For the devotional images of the Arma Christi, the abstraction is such that the signs of Christ’s martyrdom on Golgotha replace his body while maintaining the same evocative potential. In the final part, the article investigates the material, fluid, hyperreal and mechanical strategies that animate the book-body of Christ, Egerton 1821, focusing in particular on blood and milk as substances of life.