Last Supper

The Last Supper (c. 1631-32) at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan places Rubens in direct competition with the defining image of the subject in Western painting: Leonardo's Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie, visible across the city. Any treatment of the Last Supper in Milan had to engage consciously with Leonardo's version, and Rubens's approach was characteristically confident — rather than avoiding the comparison, he embraced it, using the monumental multi-figure narrative composition to demonstrate how the Baroque's warmth, physical directness, and chromatic richness could renew a subject that Leonardo's geometric austerity had made canonical. Rubens had copied Leonardo's Anghiari cartoon in Italy and had long meditated on Leonardo's compositional intelligence; the Last Supper offered him a direct opportunity to bring Baroque vitality to what Leonardo had treated as a problem in geometry and psychology. The Brera's holding of this major work in the city of Leonardo's masterpiece creates an implicit dialogue across a century and a half of European painting's development.

The composition arranges the apostles around Christ in a dynamic grouping that emphasizes the moment of the institution of the Eucharist. Rubens' warm palette and fluid late brushwork create an atmosphere of solemn intensity.

This Last Supper from 1631 has been conserved over the centuries. The canvas has been relined. The complex arrangement of thirteen figures around the table has been well-maintained. Some of the darker background passages have become more opaque, slightly flattening the spatial depth.