Advanced Search

The Supper at Emmaus

The Supper at Emmaus

Artist: Hendrick ter Brugghen (Dutch, 1588-1629)
Date: 1616
Dimensions:
Painting: H: 63 1/8 in. (160.3 cm); W: 74 in. (188 cm);
Frame: H: 72 in. (182.9 cm); W: 83 1/8 (211.1 cm); Depth: 2 1/2 in. (6.4 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1983.1
Label Text:According to the Gospel of Saint Luke in the Bible, after the death of Jesus Christ, two of his disciples traveling on the road to Emmaus met a stranger and invited him to join them. At supper the stranger blessed bread and broke it to give to the disciples. They saw immediately that the stranger was Christ risen from the dead. Hendrick Terbrugghen masterfully and subtly conveys the very moment the awed disciples recognize Jesus and share a tense look across the table.

Terbrugghen spent ten years in Italy from 1604 to 1614, bringing back to his native Utrecht, Holland, a style with dramatic contrasts of light and shade inspired by the enormously influential Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610). In this earliest known picture following his return, Terbrugghen based his subject on a painting by Caravaggio (illustrated here), though without the dramatic gestures in his Italian model. Working in Utrecht, a Catholic city in a largely Protestant nation, Terbrugghen became the leading Dutch painter of religious themes in the Caravaggesque style.

[caption] Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, oil on canvas, about 1600. National Gallery, London.
On view
In Collection(s)