Cleveland Museum of Art

The Last Supper

Albrecht Dürer

Date

1523

Medium

woodcut

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Albrecht Dürer made this version of the Last Supper after returning from Venice. He adopted the typically Italian horizontal format, long table, and disciples seated on the far side. The table has been cleared, except for a single chalice, which, along with the empty platter, basket of bread, and wine decanter in the foreground, refers to the Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Significantly, Judas—the disciple who would betray Christ—is not present. Some art historians interpret the scene as the moment Christ exhorts his disciples to love one another (John 13:34), a passage emphasized by the Protestant leader Martin Luther, whose Ninety-Five Theses was championed by those sympathetic to Catholic reform. One-point perspective is a technique that artists use to render three dimensional space using a series of invisible lines converging on a vanishing point. Here, as in most last supper scenes, the vanishing point is located on the figure of Christ.

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