Supper in the House of Simon

Maestro Bartolomé was a painter active in the Ciudad Rodrigo area of Castile in the late fifteenth century. This Supper in the House of Simon from around 1488 was part of a large altarpiece cycle now dispersed between the Cook Collection and the University of Arizona. The extensive program depicted scenes from the life of Christ and the Old Testament. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting.

Oil on panel with the Hispano-Flemish technique prevalent in Castilian workshops. The banquet scene shows detailed rendering of architectural setting and figured costumes.