They are both religious representations adapted for the places in which they were displayed, and ultimately reflections on the subject of death and redemption within the Christian tradition.
Massacio's is a representation of the Holy figures set in perspective view to enhance the viewers sense of the majesty of the holy presence at the moment of death as a moment of communion. Grunewald's by contrast is a reflection upon suffering, depicted as a reality, contorted faces, limbs and flesh in the extreme, death in Grunewald's is not idealized, Christ is represented as a dying man, His suffering is our redemption, literally.
