Supper at Emmaus by Pontormo

Supper at Emmaus by Pontormo (1525)

He took bread

On the evening of the Resurrection two disciples were walking to a village called Emmaus when a stranger joined them. At the village they pressed him to stay, and "it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight" (Luke 24:30–31, Douay-Rheims). One of the two is named by Luke as Cleophas (24:18).

At the table

Pontormo sets the meal at a round table with a white cloth. Christ sits behind it, facing us, with a thin gold halo, in a blue mantle over a yellow tunic. He raises his right hand in blessing and with his left holds a loaf on the table; his gaze goes straight out of the picture.

The two disciples sit on wooden stools in the foreground with their backs half turned. The one at the left, in a white tunic with a red cloak thrown across his lap, pours from a metal jug. The one at the right, in a broad pale hat, with a green cloak over yellow and red, holds a bread roll in one hand and a knife in the other. Between them the table is laid with a pewter plate, a knife, clear glass beakers and a carafe.

Their bare feet rest on the floor, and under and around the table are animals: a dog's head looks out at the lower left corner, and two cats crouch in the shadows beneath the stools. On the floor in front lies a small curled paper, the cartellino on which Pontormo signed and dated the picture 1525; it is one of the very few works he signed and dated.

The monks

Behind the table stand men who are not in the Gospel: Carthusian monks in white habits, portraits of members of the community for whom the picture was painted. The Uffizi identifies one of them as the prior, Leonardo Buonafede. Above Christ, in a circle of light, a triangle holds a single eye, a sign of the Trinity. The Uffizi notes that this eye is a later addition, painted over Pontormo's own image of the Trinity; Italian sources suggest it replaced a three-faced image that was no longer acceptable after the Counter-Reformation.

The Certosa

In 1523, to escape plague in Florence, Pontormo took refuge at the Certosa del Galluzzo, the Carthusian monastery south of the city, where he painted frescoes of the Passion and Resurrection. The prior, Leonardo Buonafede, then commissioned this canvas for the part of the monastery where guests were received and fed, the foresteria refectory or the pantry, which suits its subject. Giorgio Vasari admired it.

The composition draws on Albrecht Dürer's woodcut of the Supper at Emmaus from the Small Passion of 1511, including Christ's frontal pose and the wide hat of the disciple at the right. The plain table, the metal jug, the glasses and the animals give the scene a Northern realism unusual in Florentine painting of the time, and it has been seen as a precedent for Caravaggio, Velázquez and Zurbarán.

The painter

Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo after his birthplace near Empoli, was born in 1494. According to Vasari he was placed as a boy with several masters, among them Andrea del Sarto. Agnolo Bronzino was his chief pupil. He died in Florence in 1557.

The painting today

The canvas measures 230 by 173 centimetres and is in the Uffizi, Florence (Inventory 1890 no. 8740), shown with the works of Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino.

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole canvas, in its tall format, from the eye in the triangle at the top to the dog, the cats and the cartellino on the floor.

Sources: Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, Inv. 1890 n. 8740 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia, "Supper at Emmaus (Pontormo)" · Wikipedia (Italian), "Cena in Emmaus (Pontormo)" · Wikipedia, "Pontormo" · Luke 24:13–35 (Douay-Rheims)