Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), Supper at Emmaus, 1601, Oil and tempera on canvas, 141 × 196.2 cm, The National Gallery, London
Painted in 1601 for Ciriaco Mattei, and commissioned in the wake of the public sensation caused by the Contarelli Chapel paintings in San Luigi dei Francesi, the Supper at Emmaus belongs to the most confident phase of Caravaggio’s Roman career. Ciriaco, together with his brother Asdrubale, was among the most active collectors in the city, and their patronage gave Caravaggio access to a cultivated audience willing to absorb the demands of his naturalism. Within two years the Mattei circle commissioned three canvases from him, a degree of sustained investment that speaks to how seriously his work was being taken in the highest levels of Roman collecting.
The canvas captures the instant in the Gospel of Luke when the risen Christ reveals himself to the disciples at Emmaus. Cleopas, in a brown jacket bearing the scallop-shell pilgrim badge, flings his arms wide in astonishment, while his companion shoves back from his chair in disbelief. Between them, Christ raises his right hand in blessing, his stillness holding steady against the commotion around him. The fruit basket, balanced perilously at the edge of the table, carries both symbolic resonance and a calculated challenge to pictorial space, drawing the viewer into the scene as though they might catch it before it falls.
Contrary to the long-standing impression that Caravaggio worked impulsively, without preparation, technical examination has shown that he sometimes laid down outlines with a brush — the abbozzo — and traces of brushed underdrawing in dark brown paint survive here, slightly above the final contour of the wine glass, indicating that the still-life arrangement was carefully placed before paint was applied. Caravaggio did not sketch in light tones; he began with a graphic trace in burnt umber, then, while it was still wet, built over it with fast, firm brushwork that merged the underdrawing with the first paint layer. What reads as spontaneous presence was the product of close observation and deliberate construction.
This was painted when Caravaggio was still secure in Rome, sustained by powerful patrons and admired for his startling directness of vision. The killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni in 1606 ended that. He fled Rome under a bando capitale, his life forfeit to anyone who caught him within papal territory. The Brera Supper at Emmaus was most likely painted on the Colonna estate at Paliano, where he sought refuge in the immediate aftermath of the killing. The work was subsequently sold, through the intermediary Ottavio Costi, to the Costa brothers; by 1624 it appears in an inventory of the Palazzo Patrizi in Rome.
The contrast between the two versions is worth dwelling on. The London canvas is expansive and brightly lit, with a youthful Christ and figures whose gestures reach outward, into the viewer’s space. In the Brera version, the poses and gestures have shed their theatricality; the colours remain varied but are less insistent, the light softer, the handling looser. Presence becomes more important than performance. Where the London canvas announces itself as a display of virtuosity for a patrician collection, the Brera picture has the quality of something painted for the painter’s own need, with little between him and the subject. Together they trace a path through Caravaggio’s career: from the ambitious naturalist working for one of Rome’s great households, to the fugitive painter on the run, turning back to a familiar subject under very different circumstances.
References
Graham-Dixon, A. (2010) Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. London: Allen Lane.
Keith, L. (1998) ‘Three Paintings by Caravaggio’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 19, pp. 37–51.Available at, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/publications/technical-bulletin/three-paintings-by-caravaggio (Accessed 10 June 2023)
Langdon, H. (1998) Caravaggio: A Life. London: Chatto & Windus.
Pinacoteca di Brera (n.d.) Supper at Emmaus. Available at: https://pinacotecabrera.org/en/collezioni/collezione-on-line/supper-at-emmaus/ (Accessed: 10 June 2023).
Puglisi, C. (1998) Caravaggio. London: Phaidon.