Supper at Emmaus (London) (Caravaggio)

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Supper at Emmaus

Caravaggio, 1601

Oil on canvas

141 × 196,2 cm

National Gallery, London

The Supper at Emmaus by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a masterpiece painted in 1601, and now in the National Gallery in London. It was originally painted for the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei, and late purchased by Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

The painting depicts the moment when the resurrected but incognito Jesus, reveals himself to two of his disciples (presumed to be Luke and Cleophas). The moment captures when Christ reveals himself to the astonished disciples, only to soon vanish from their sight (Luke 24: 30-31). Luke wears the scallopshell of a pilgrim. The other apostle wears torn clothes. Luke gesticulates in a perspectively-challenging extension of arms in and out of the frame of reference. The standing groom, forehead smooth and face in darkness, appears oblivious to the event. The painting is unusual for the life-sized figures, the dark and blank background. The table lays out a still-life meal. Like the world these apostles knew, the basket of food teeters perilously over the edge.

In Mark (16:12) Jesus is said to have appeared to them "in another form", which may be why he is depicted beardless here, as opposed to the bearded Christ in Calling of St Matthew, where a group of seated money counters is interrupted by the recruiting Christ. It is also a recurring theme in Caravaggio's paintings to find the sublime interrupting the daily routine. The unexalted humanity is apt for this scene, since the human Jesus has made himself unrecognizable to his disciples, and at once confirms and surmounts his humanity. Caravaggio seems to suggest that perhaps a Jesus could enter our daily encounters. The dark background envelops the tableau.

Caravaggio painted a second version of the Supper at Emmaus (now in the Brera Fine Arts Academy, Milan) in 1606. By comparison, the gestures of figures are far more restrained , making presence more important than performance. This difference possibly reflects the circumstances of Caravaggio's life at that point (he had fled Rome as an outlaw following the death of Ranuccio Tomassoni), or possibly, recognising the ongoing evolution of his art, in the intervening five years he had come to recognise the value of understatement.

[edit] See also

• Chronology of works by Caravaggio

[edit] Further reading

• Review of the painting by the National Gallery.

[edit] Comparison of other painter's Supper at Emmaus

• Paintings of the Supper at Emmaus by other artists
• The Getty Museum painting by a Caravaggisti is a far less satisfying piece. More illuminated and suitable to more Florentine tastes, the figures are dressed as in antiquity, the tension is lost. [1]

• Compare this painting with the fuzzy, gloomy room-dwarfed, grouping in Rembrandt's subsequent representation. [2]

• Compare this painting to the earlier version by Titian. [3]

• Compare this painting to Pontormo's mystical assembly. The hovering pyramid with an eye was likely added later. This canvas was painted while Pontormo found shelter from the plague in the Carthusian Cloistered monastery of Galuzzo outside of Florence. Monks are represented in the background. Painting is now in the Uffizi. [4]

• Compare this painting to Jacopo Bassano's earlier mannerist treatment (1538), where one of the apostles sits in serpentine discomfort and the greatest surprise is affected by the pet cat upon seeing a dog. Like Veronese's treatment of Jesus at Cannae, Jesus appears to dine in wealthy abodes, not in the plebeian setting of Caravaggio's. [5]