Supper at Emmaus
Bassano (family da Ponte)
c. 1538;
Oil on canvas, 235 x 250 cm;
Chiesa, CittadellaIn his lifetime, Jacopo Bassano was one of the most famous and
influential masters of the Late Renaissance in Italy, and his
paintings were widely collected throughout Europe for their luminous
colors and sensitively observed incidents from everyday life. Trained
by his father, a minor painter, in the north Italian hill town of
Bassano, he is recorded in neighboring Venice by 1535, where he was
studying with Bonifazio de' Pitati. Bassano's youthful works also
reflect the influence of
Titian, Pordenone, and other northern Italian
masters, along with artists like
Raphael and
Albrecht D&uuml;rer,
whose
compositions he knew through prints. By the late 1530s, however, his
style developed beyond these sources to assert an inventiveness
rivaling that of his contemporaries
Tintoretto and
Veronese.
Bassano's
sons (Francesco, Leandro, and Gerolamo) helped to extend his influence
well into the seventeenth century.Bassano painted this devotional subject,
for a chapel in the town's
cathedral, depicting Christ's miraculous appearance after the
Resurrection (Luke 24:13). In the act of blessing and breaking bread
at the inn, Christ reveals himself to two of his disciples who
previously had not recognized him. The sacramental message is further
conveyed in the finely executed still life of bread, wine, and
eggs--the latter a traditional symbol of resurrection and
immortality. By including such elements of everyday life as a
servant in accurately portrayed contemporary dress, and a quarrelsome
cat and dog, Bassano has in this work brought the miracle into the
scope of the viewer's experience to a degree that no previous artist
had achieved.
