by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
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Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: The London Painting
Two men have sat down to eat with a stranger. As he blesses the bread, they recognise the risen Christ. One grips his chair as though about to stand; the other throws his arms wide. Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus fixes on the moment when an ordinary meal becomes an act of recognition. The setting is close enough to invite us to the table, while the reactions suggest that what the men see exceeds what they can yet explain.[1]
This is the painting made for Ciriaco Mattei in 1601 and now in the National Gallery, London. Caravaggio returned to the subject in a distinct canvas now at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, dated about 1605–06. The two works share a Gospel event but differ in composition, colour and pace. They should be read together without collapsing their histories.[1][2]
Caravaggio in context
The Cardsharps
c.1595Calling of Saint Matthew
1599–1600Supper at Emmaus
1601At a Glance
- ArtistMichelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio (1571–1610)
- TitleThe Supper at Emmaus
- Date1601[1]
- Mediumprincipally oil on canvas; technical analysis also found egg tempera mixed with a little oil in raised white embroidery details[1][4]
- Dimensions141 × 196.2 cm[1]
- CollectionNational Gallery, London, inventory NG172[1]
- Original patronCiriaco Mattei[1]
- Subjectrecognition of the risen Christ at Emmaus, from Luke 24:13–35, especially verses 30–31[1][3]
- Related versionthe later Brera Supper at Emmaus, 141 × 175 cm, inventory 2296[2]
Contents
- The Instant Caravaggio Chose
- Four People at a Table
- Gestures That Cross into the Viewer's Space
- Food, Light and Possible Meanings
- The Mattei Commission and Later Ownership
- What Technical Examination Reveals
- London and Brera: Two Distinct Treatments
- Where to See the Painting
- Frequently Asked Questions
Look closer: The Supper at Emmaus
The London painting turns recognition into a burst of gestures around an ordinary meal. These details separate the figures’ reactions from the still life on the table.
123Details from The Supper at Emmaus
Select a detail image to open the full-size gallery, then use the arrows to compare views.
Christ’s raised hand
Christ blesses the meal at the centre, his gesture small compared with the disciples’ expansive reactions.
The disciple’s open arms
The disciple at the right throws his arms outward, making recognition a bodily reaction that nearly reaches the canvas edge.
The basket at the edge
The fruit basket seems to project over the table edge, extending the painted scene toward the viewer.
The Instant Caravaggio Chose
In Luke's account, two disciples walk towards Emmaus after the Crucifixion. They meet Christ but do not recognise him. He joins them for a meal, takes bread, blesses and gives it to them; their eyes are opened, and he disappears. Caravaggio chooses the threshold between the blessing and the disappearance. Recognition is spreading through the seated men, while Christ remains present before us.[1][3]
The choice is important because it gives the painting more than one time at once. The innkeeper appears to be watching a guest perform a familiar gesture. One disciple is already moving back; the other reaches across the table. The viewer arrives at the moment the reactions diverge. We can see the religious event and the uneven human process of grasping it.
The scene is domestic, but its format is substantial. At nearly two metres wide, the canvas can accommodate bodies that seem close to life size. Caravaggio does not put a crowded landscape or a distant sacred building behind the figures. A plain wall keeps the emphasis on people, food and the exchange around the table. The National Gallery calls this one of his domestic religious pictures, a useful description of how a biblical narrative enters an everyday room.[1]
Four People at a Table
Christ sits at the centre, facing outward and looking down towards the bread. His face is youthful and without a beard. That is a striking choice for a viewer expecting the conventional older, bearded image of Christ; it gives the disciples' failure to recognise him a visual basis. His red garment and illuminated face still distinguish him from the men in worn clothes around him.[1]
The disciple at the left is seen mostly from behind. He grips the arms of his chair, and his body appears to lift from it. His torn sleeve and working clothes keep the supernatural event rooted in a tangible human body. The National Gallery suggests he is Cleophas, the named traveller in Luke. The identification is plausible rather than written into the image.[1][3]
At the right, the other disciple stretches his arms so broadly that they seem to reach across the picture plane. He is sometimes called Peter, but that name is not secure in the Gospel passage, which names Cleophas and leaves his companion unnamed. Calling him simply the second disciple lets the painting's visual action remain clear without turning a proposed identification into a fact.[1][3]
The standing innkeeper looks down at the table. His relative stillness sets him apart from the disciples' sudden movement. It is possible to read him as a person who sees the meal but has not recognised its meaning; the National Gallery makes that interpretation. He also has a practical narrative role: he makes this a place of hospitality, not a vision isolated from ordinary work.[1]
Gestures That Cross into the Viewer's Space
Caravaggio gives each disciple a different route into the revelation. The left figure's chair projects towards us, and his elbow seems to break the surface of the canvas. The right figure's arms open across its width. Christ's smaller blessing gesture holds the centre while the responses pull towards the edges. Together these movements create a rhythm from quiet action to bodily shock.[1]
The National Gallery points to an underlying geometric order: the disciples' backs and outstretched arms draw attention towards Christ's face. This is one reason the picture feels immediate without being unplanned. The figures are caught in movement, yet their placement guides the viewer towards the cause of that movement.[1]
The table occupies the boundary between their room and ours. Fruit leans close to its edge; the right disciple's hand appears to project towards us. A viewer is made conscious of standing on the open side of the meal. The painting does not say that we are a fifth Gospel witness. It gives us a position from which to test the same question that occupies the disciples: what has just become visible?
Food, Light and Possible Meanings
The white cloth, patterned rug, bread, roast bird, fruit, glass and carafe are rendered with extraordinary attention. The basket seems to balance at the edge of the table. These are not interchangeable decorative props. Bread is central to Luke's account of recognition; the other things establish a convincing meal and create surfaces through which light can pass, reflect or cast a shadow.[1][3]
The still life has prompted symbolic readings. A fruit basket may suggest seasonal abundance or vulnerability; a shadow may invite a religious association. Such readings can be illuminating, but the National Gallery's basic account of the subject does not require each apple or grape to carry one fixed coded meaning. The surest starting point is what can be seen: the basket's position makes the near edge of the table precarious, while the food makes the moment of blessing physical.
The owning gallery does offer more specific possibilities. Its 2020 close reading associates the bread with the Eucharist, white and red grapes with water, wine and Christ's wounds, and a split pomegranate with the Resurrection. The gallery's audio description also reads the basket's shadow on the cloth as fish-shaped, a possible sign of Christ. These are attributed interpretations of visible details, not an inventory of meanings that Caravaggio wrote down. The objects also work as a demonstration of different textures and surfaces: crust, fruit skin, glass, water, wine and white linen catch the same light in different ways. A visitor can test a symbolic reading against the image without needing every fruit to be decoded before the central blessing is intelligible.[1][6]
Light enters strongly from the left and falls across faces, cloth and vessels. Christ casts a dark shape against the wall. The National Gallery describes that shape as resembling a reverse halo, and it interprets the outstretched disciple's pose as an echo of the Crucifixion. Both are readings of the painted form rather than objects independently recorded in the room.[1]
The contrast of light and shade does not make this painting monochrome. Red, green and warm flesh tones remain active against the plain background. Looking carefully at the colour prevents the familiar label “dark Caravaggio” from replacing the specific arrangement of this 1601 canvas.
The Mattei Commission and Later Ownership
The National Gallery records that Ciriaco Mattei commissioned the painting in 1601. Ciriaco and his brother Asdrubale were major Roman patrons and protectors of Caravaggio. The gallery connects them to three commissions in 1601–02: this Supper, The Taking of Christ and a Saint John the Baptist now in the Capitoline collection. The Supper followed the public impact of the Matthew paintings at San Luigi dei Francesi.[1]
The account book gives this association a firmer date than style alone. The biographical entry for Ciriaco Mattei in Treccani, drawing on Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa's study of Mattei bank payments, records 150 scudi paid for the Supper on 7 January 1602. That payment anchors the named commission and establishes that the picture existed by then; it does not require changing the National Gallery's 1601 date for its making. Treccani separates this entry from 125 scudi paid for The Taking of Christ on 2 January 1603. It also notes that two 1602 payments totalling 85 scudi do not name a subject, although a later Mattei inventory connects a Saint John with the family. Thus the three pictures belong to one patronage circle, but their surviving financial records have different levels of specificity.[5]
The canvas did not stay with the Mattei family. It moved into the Borghese collection in Rome and was recorded there in later inventories. The National Gallery received it in 1839 from George Vernon; its inventory number is NG172. This provenance distinguishes the London object from later compositions or copies sharing its title.[1]
The National Gallery's fuller provenance identifies the painting at the Villa Borghese by 1650 and in a 1693 Borghese inventory. It was sold by Prince Camillo Borghese on 9 April 1801, together with other pictures. It had reached the collection of George Vernon by 1831; an attempted sale that year did not remove it from his possession, and he presented it to the National Gallery in 1839. The museum calls it the first Caravaggio to enter its collection. The ownership trail is substantially stronger after the seventeenth-century Borghese records than in the interval immediately after the Mattei commission.[1]
The gallery describes the painting's present frame as seventeenth-century Italian. That is a date and type for the frame now attached to it, not proof that it is the frame used in Ciriaco Mattei's palace. The early Borghese record secures custody by 1650 without supplying the precise date, terms or room in which the picture changed hands. These limits matter when reconstructing what its first viewers actually saw.[1]
A modern loan briefly brought two of Mattei's commissions back together. In May–September 2024, the Ulster Museum in Belfast displayed the London Supper beside Dublin's Taking of Christ. Its account identifies the Supper as a loan from the National Gallery, London; the Taking was lent by the Jesuit Community in Dublin, with the support of the National Gallery of Ireland, where it is on long-term loan. The exhibition was an opportunity to compare their original palace context and the different ways their figures seem to reach into the viewer's space. It did not change their ownership or imply that the paintings normally hang together today.[7]
The commission also explains why a religious subject could be handled as a close, table-sized encounter rather than as a chapel altarpiece. Its first audience was a private patron and his circle. The picture's apparent intimacy is therefore part of its purpose, not evidence that Caravaggio treated the biblical episode casually.
What Technical Examination Reveals
The National Gallery's technical account gives a rare view of the making of this specific canvas. It identifies traces of dark brown brush drawing near the base of the wine glass and quick, raised strokes where the right disciple's sash meets the tablecloth. It reports one significant change to a disciple's left knee, moved behind rather than in front of the carpet. These observations suggest planning and adjustment as the picture developed.[1]
Larry Keith's fuller technical study describes a plain-weave linen support with a single horizontal seam. Above it is a translucent, warm preparation made with calcite, earth pigments and some lead white. In much of the flesh it is covered by further paint, but it remains visible as a middle tone in areas of hair and at some boundaries between figures and background. It even helps make the shaded side of the goblet and parts of the patterned table covering. The apparently continuous light and shade thus rests on deliberate choices about where to cover the ground and where to let it contribute to the image.[4]
The changed knee can be followed through paint samples, not merely inferred from an unusual pose. Keith found that the right disciple's breeches were first green, using green earth and malachite with a probable lead-tin-yellow highlight, before being repainted black. A sample at the edge of the carpet shows paint added over the earlier leg arrangement. The revision put the leg behind the carpet instead of in front of it, clarifying the figure's backward reaction while his arm thrusts outward. It is a local compositional change; it does not imply that the entire scene was repeatedly repainted.[4]
Elsewhere, the close-fitting borders between forms suggest an early, detailed layout. Keith notes that the white tablecloth was painted around the still-life objects rather than spread across the whole table and then covered by them. Analysis found walnut oil in most of the work, while the raised white embroidery threads were painted with egg tempera mixed with a little oil to produce a denser highlight. The term “oil on canvas” remains the museum's catalogue shorthand, but the observed variation in binding medium helps explain the crisp difference between cloth, embroidery, glass and fruit.[1][4]
No securely attributed preparatory drawing by Caravaggio survives. That absence does not prove he never made one, and the technical record does not show an artist improvising every figure without thought. The gallery reports that no incision marks are visible in this Supper, though they appear in some other Caravaggio works. A claim about one canvas should not be automatically applied to his whole career.[1]
The glass, fruit and cloth show why technical and visual looking belong together. A small shift in a wine glass outline matters because the arrangement of the objects controls the near edge of the composition. The painting creates an instant of surprise through careful construction.
London and Brera: Two Distinct Treatments
The Brera Supper at Emmaus is a later Caravaggio painting, not the London work after a change of title or location. Brera dates it to about 1605–06, gives its measurements as 141 × 175 cm and identifies it as inventory 2296. Its catalogue notes a more intimate arrangement, a restrained colour range and dramatic light compared with the earlier version. Technical examination has revealed an underlying earlier arrangement on the Brera canvas, supporting its status as a developed original composition rather than a straightforward copy.[2]
The London work is wider. Its fruit basket presses towards the viewer, the disciples' gestures are expansive, and the red and green colours help carry the action. The later treatment is more contained. It is tempting to turn that difference into a tidy psychological account of Caravaggio's life, but the paintings themselves, their different circumstances and the institutions' records give a firmer basis for comparison. The Brera article develops that second work on its own terms.
The directory retains both because they are materially different paintings with separate histories. The older route Supper at Emmaus 1602 should lead to this London page as a date variant; 1601 is the National Gallery's current date.[1]
Where to See the Painting
The London painting belongs to the National Gallery. Its collection record gives the current display room and should be consulted before a visit, since a room location can change. A visitor can compare it with Caravaggio's Boy Bitten by a Lizard and Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist in the same collection, while recognising that display arrangements are not permanent.[1]
For its place in the career, return to the Caravaggio guide or browse the paintings directory. The Calling of Saint Matthew shows the public Roman commission that immediately preceded this private Mattei picture. The Taking of Christ belongs to the same patronage setting.[1]
Explore the Caravaggio collection
| Name | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Adoration of the Shepherds by Caravaggio: The Messina Nativity | 1608–09; precise order relative to Resurrection of Lazarus remains unresolved | Artwork |
| Amor Victorious by Caravaggio | 1601–02 in the Berlin owner record | Artwork |
| Bacchus by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1598, according to the Uffizi | Artwork |
| Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | after 1597, probably around the turn of the seventeenth century, according to the Ambrosiana | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1594–95 in the National Gallery's current catalogue; URL suffix “1596” is inherited | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: The Florence Version Attributed to Caravaggio | disputed; Longhi's catalogue record preserves historical 1592–93 and other proposed ranges, including c.1597 | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit by Caravaggio: The Royal Collection Painting | about 1592–93 in the owner's current exhibition record | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit in Florence: A Derivation from Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Boy with a Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio Paintings in Rome: Churches, Museums and a Practical Route | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio Quotes: What the Documents Actually Record | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio's Lute Player: The Del Monte Painting Once Shown at the Met | about 1596–97 in the Met catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio's Painting Technique: Grounds, Incisions, Revisions and Light | — | Guide |
| Christ at the Column by Caravaggio: The Rouen Flagellation | c.1606 in the owner caption; owner prose gives 1606–07 | Artwork |
| Christ on the Mount of Olives by Caravaggio: The Lost Berlin Painting | — | Artwork |
| Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the Roma Capitale church record | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1603 in the 2019 KHM record; “1607” is an inherited URL suffix | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns in Prato: Attributed to Caravaggio | about 1602–03 in the collection presentation | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | 1606–07 or 1609–10 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue; the later Naples period is favoured by many scholars, while the owner keeps the question open | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Prado Painting | about 1600 in Prado material; “1599” survives only in the legacy URL | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1600–01 in the KHM's 2019 exhibition record; “1607” is a legacy route label | Artwork |
| Did Caravaggio Make Drawings? What Survives and What Paintings Reveal | — | Guide |
| Ecce Homo: Caravaggio's Madrid Rediscovery and the Genoa Painting | — | Artwork |
| John the Baptist in Caravaggio's Paintings: A Guide to the Different Versions | — | Artwork |
| Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio | beginning of the seventeenth century in the owning museum's account; about 1599–1600 in the Kimbell's 2025 loan label; around 1602 in one specialist catalogue | Artwork |
| Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto: Caravaggio's Ludovisi Ceiling | about 1597; the archive connects the work with Cardinal del Monte's 1597 commission | Artwork |
| Madonna and Child with Saint Anne by Caravaggio: The Palafrenieri Altarpiece | 1605 in the Galleria Borghese object field; completed and delivered by 8 April 1606 | Artwork |
| Madonna of Loreto by Caravaggio: The Pilgrims at Sant'Agostino | broadly c.1604–06; institutional records differ slightly in their starting year | Artwork |
| Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio: The Vienna Altarpiece | around 1603 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum's object record | Artwork |
| Martha and Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio: The Detroit Painting | about 1598 in the Detroit Institute of Arts record | Artwork |
| Medusa by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painted Shield | 1596–98 in the Uffizi's virtual exhibition; specialist research reports the shield delivered to the Medici wardrobe by 7 September 1598 | Artwork |
| Narcissus, Attributed to Caravaggio | dependent on attribution; the Zeri catalogue gives a broad 1610–50 range under Spadarino | Artwork |
| Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence: Caravaggio's Missing Painting | somewhere in 1600–09 in the parliamentary report; a specific 1609 execution and place remain debated | Artwork |
| Penitent Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio | 1597 in the owner's catalogue, during Caravaggio's early Roman activity | Artwork |
| Portrait of a Courtesan: Caravaggio's Lost Berlin Portrait | Berlin's data field says c.1590, while its own text compares a Caravaggio work of c.1598; precise date unresolved | Artwork |
| Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and His Page by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli? Caravaggio's Pitti Knight of Malta | 1608 in the Restituzioni object heading; within Caravaggio's Malta period | Artwork |
| Portrait of Maffeo Barberini: The Seated Corsini Painting | c.1596–97 in the national catalogue | Artwork |
| Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini: Caravaggio's Newly Acquired Painting | around the late 1590s / age thirty; “1598” in the inherited address is approximate, not an exact document date | Artwork |
| Portrait of Pope Paul V: A Caravaggio Attribution and a Borghese Copy | — | Artwork |
| Prints After Caravaggio: Who Made Them and What They Show | — | Guide |
| Reclining Saint John the Baptist: A Disputed Caravaggio Attribution | often proposed for the artist's final years; the later museum list does not give a precise year. | Artwork |
| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Caravaggio | about 1597 in the owner's catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio: The Thyssen Painting | about 1598–99 in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Meditation by Caravaggio: The Cremona Painting | 1603–06 in the owner account; c.1605–06 in a KHM exhibition caption | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Prayer: Caravaggio's Carpineto Painting | 1606 in a 2016–17 exhibition work list | Artwork |
| Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy by Caravaggio | c.1595–96 in the owner wall text | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome in Meditation: Caravaggio's Montserrat Painting | 1605 in the owner record; an owner publication reports scholarship placing it about 1605–06 | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | c.1606 in the owner catalogue; the “1605” URL suffix is inherited | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Malta Painting | around 1607–08; foundation dates Malaspina's commission to 1608 | Artwork |
| Saint John in the Wilderness at Toledo Cathedral | exact 1598 not established by the cited cathedral account. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at Galleria Corsini, Rome | about 1606 in the national record; older proposals ranged from the late 1590s onward. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Capitoline Museums, Rome | 1602. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Galleria Borghese | 1609–10 in the current Borghese record. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Spring: The Bonello Painting in Malta | early seventeenth century in the institutional account; a precise 1608 is not established there. | Artwork |
| Saint Matthew and the Angel: Caravaggio's Lost First Altarpiece | — | Artwork |
| Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1609–10, likely late Naples period in the Gallery's account | Artwork |
| Salome with the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's Madrid Painting | — | Artwork |
| Sleeping Cupid by Caravaggio: The Painting Made in Malta | about 1608, Malta period | Artwork |
| Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge: Is It by Caravaggio? | — | Artwork |
| Supper at Emmaus (1606): Caravaggio's Brera Painting | — | Artwork |
| The Annunciation by Caravaggio in Nancy | c.1607–10 in the collection record; 1608–10 in the museum's restoration account | Artwork |
| The Basel Saint John the Baptist: Once Labelled Caravaggio, Now Maíno | about 1608–10 in that schedule, rather than the legacy URL's 1600. | Artwork |
| The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | about 1608; installed in the Oratory on 29 August 1608 | Artwork |
| The Burial of Saint Lucy by Caravaggio in Syracuse | 1608, during Caravaggio's Syracuse stay | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | about 1599–1600 | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Caravaggio | about 1602–04 in the Trust's object text | Artwork |
| The Cardsharps by Caravaggio | about 1596–97 in the Kimbell's current object record | Artwork |
| The Conversion of Saint Paul: Caravaggio's Odescalchi Panel | commissioned in 1600; painted around 1600–01 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew by Caravaggio | 1606–07 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | about 1601 | Artwork |
| The Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio | commissioned 1601; completed late 1605 or early 1606, according to the Louvre | Artwork |
| The Denial of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | 1610 | Artwork |
| The Doria Pamphilj Saint John the Baptist: A Second Youth with a Ram | linked compositionally to the Capitoline 1602 picture; an exact production year for this canvas is not established by the owner pages used here. | Artwork |
| The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio: The Vatican Deposition | about 1600–04 in Vatican Museums publication material | Artwork |
| The Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio: The Capodimonte Altarpiece | around 1607, in the first Naples period | Artwork |
| The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio: The Louvre Version and Its Roman Counterpart | — | Artwork |
| The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | early 1600s in the Met catalogue; no more exact owner date asserted here | Artwork |
| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the SPSG presentation | Artwork |
| The Inspiration of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | usually 1602; also catalogued 1602–03, for the installed final altarpiece | Artwork |
| The Lute Player by Caravaggio: The Hermitage Painting | about 1596 in the Hermitage collection publication; the Hermitage Friends restoration page gives about 1595–96 | Artwork |
| The Magdalen in Ecstasy: Caravaggio, Copies and a Disputed Original | — | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | 1599–1600; unveiled with The Calling in 1600 | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| The Musicians by Caravaggio | 1597 | Artwork |
| The Resurrection of Lazarus by Caravaggio in Messina | 1609; delivered 10 June 1609 in the owner account | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi: A Former Caravaggio Attribution | about 1615–17 in the Nicholas Hall catalogue; “1598” is an inherited URL label, not the accepted date | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1603 in the Uffizi catalogue | Artwork |
| The Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio | 1606–07, according to the Pio Monte | Artwork |
| The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: The London Painting | 1601 | Artwork |
| The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio | 1602 | Artwork |
| The Toulouse *Judith Beheading Holofernes*: A Caravaggio Attribution Debate | c.1606–07 if identified with the recorded Naples work; that identification is debated | Artwork |
| Young Sick Bacchus by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Youth with a Ram: Why Caravaggio's Saint John Looks So Unusual | — | Artwork |
No matching pages found.
Discussion
Share a close observation about The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio or a source that clarifies its history.
Which detail changes your reading?
Is there a collection record or document worth comparing?
What remains uncertain?
Join the Conversation
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Supper at Emmaus is in London?
Why do the disciples suddenly recognise Christ?
Who is the man with his back to us?
Is the other disciple Saint Peter?
Did Caravaggio paint a second version?
Yes. Brera owns a distinct Supper at Emmaus dated around 1605–06. It is more compact and visually restrained than the 1601 London composition.[2]
References
- National Gallery, London, The Supper at Emmaus, NG172.
- Pinacoteca di Brera, Cena in Emmaus, inventory 2296.
- The Bible, Luke 24:13–35, King James Version.
- Larry Keith, “Three Paintings by Caravaggio,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 19 (1998).
- Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, “Mattei, Ciriaco”, citing Cappelletti and Testa's Mattei account-book research.
- National Gallery, London, “Picture of the month: February 2020,” The Supper at Emmaus, owner interpretation of the still life.
- Ulster Museum, “Two Caravaggio masterpieces reunited as Ulster Museum exhibition opens”, 10 May 2024, dates and lenders.
- Annotated image source: Wikimedia Commons, File:Supper at Emmaus-Caravaggio (1601).jpg, high-resolution reproduction used for the annotated details.
