The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: A Formal Analysis of the Painting - Research Paper Example

? The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: A Formal Analysis of the Painting and a Discussion of Caravaggio’s Artistic Techniques The Supper at Emmaus (1601), which today hangs in the National Gallery in London, is perhaps one of the greatest paintings in the world and is the masterpiece of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). Caravaggio was an artist of the Counter Reformation, a movement within the Roman Catholic Church which sought to affirm the doctrines of Catholicism and demonstrate the truth of the Bible stories by presenting them in vivid and realistic paintings (Oxford Art Online). Caravaggio had a strong inclination towards “realism”, which we may define as an attempt to imitate the natural appearance of things through the medium of paint on canvas. Caravaggio said that a good painter “knows how to paint well and imitate natural things well” (Oxford Art Online) and said he did not need to copy ancient art because “Nature had sufficiently provided him with Masters” (Venturi 28). The Supper at Emmaus is remarkable for its “realism” and is at the same time a work of great formal complexity. It is also wonderful for its bold contrast of light and shadow (called “chiaroscuro”) and its harmony of colours. These artistic features are not an end in themselves. They are all designed to aid Caravaggio’s presentation of his subject – the resurrected Christ, still with us in our daily lives – as the rest of this paper will seek to prove. The Supper at Emmaus illustrates a story from the Gospels. After his Crucifixion, the resurrected Christ appeared to two of his disciples who were walking on the highway. He fell into conversation with them but they did not recognize him until, later that day, the three of them sat down to dine at an inn. Christ broke the bread in his old familiar way, the disciples now realized who it was, and he then “vanished from their sight.” Surprisingly, The Supper at Emmaus was not intended to hang in a church. It was commissioned by a rich layman, Ciriaco Mattei, for his private collection and was later bought by Cardinal Scipione, also for a collection (Wilson-Smith 70). Although not hanging in a church, Caravaggio’s painting would have served as a focus for private devotion. Even today, reproductions of the picture can sometimes be found displayed in a place of honor in people’s homes and in churches. The formal composition of the painting consists of four figures grouped round a table, which is laden with food and drink. The heads of the three seated figures – Christ and the two disciples – form a triangle, with Christ’s head as the top of the triangle. This neat arrangement would, on its own, have been too harmonious for such a dramatic subject, and so Caravaggio deliberately breaks this pattern by introducing a fourth, standing figure – the innkeeper – to add a note of drama to the painting. The innkeeper also adds a new element to the composition, since three of the heads – the innkeeper, Christ, and the disciple on the right – form a bold diagonal line across the painting. This diagonal of heads echoes the direction of the light, which falls diagonally from an unseen window on the left. The strong contrasts of light and shadow add their own touch of drama to the painting, and they also help to vary the composition by distributing areas of light and dark throughout the painting. The naturalistic arrangement of the figures, with three seated and one standing, and the bold use of lighting are examples of Caravaggio’s “illusionism”, his attempt to make us believe that the scene is really taking place before our eyes. Scholars like Roberta Lampucci have shown that Caravaggio probably had a hole in the ceiling of his studio from which light filtered, and he may have posed groups of people to act as models for his paintings (“Caravaggio’s Painting Secrets”). Light falling onto figures creates shadows, making the figures look more solid and three-dimensional. In The Supper at Emmaus, Caravaggio adds to the three-dimensional quality of the image by his use of perspective, seen for example in the converging line created by the right hand side of the table. Some of the objects are presented to us in such an “in your face” manner that they are almost falling out of the painting. The basket of fruit is balanced precariously on the edge of the table and the elbow of the disciple on the left is almost jutting out of the picture. All four of the figures are life-size, which suggests the painting may have been intended to hang at a low level, at the same height as us, the viewers. Caravaggio also includes lots of realistic details, such as the hole in the elbow of the left disciple and the blemishes on the fruit, to help create the illusion that this is a real scene taking place before our eyes. All this illusionism advertises the incredible skill of the painter but also serves to present the supper at Emmaus as a real event which can be contemplated by Christian worshippers. The Supper at Emmaus shows us not a static event but a single moment of great drama – the moment when the two disciples realize that Christ is with them. As Lionello Venturi says, Caravaggio is a master at seizing “a moment of arrested motion” (Venturi 12), seen here in the exclamatory gestures of the figures. Christ is raising his hand in blessing, the left-hand disciple is leaning forward in amazement, and the right-hand disciple is throwing out his arms. It is like a moment of high drama in the theatre, an effect which is heightened by the bold lighting, which falls like the lighting on a stage set. The central character of this drama is Christ and all eyes are turned towards him. The disciples and the innkeeper are carefully positioned around Christ, who is at the centre of the action. Caravaggio uses several different ways to emphasize the importance and special nature of Christ. Christ is wearing Biblical robes while the other figures appear to be dressed in the clothes of Caravaggio’s own time. Christ’s head does not need an artificial device like a halo because the luminosity of his head is contrasted against the black shadow on the wall behind him. Christ’s face is illuminated by the falling light, which then radiates outwards from him, almost as if Christ himself is the source of light in the painting. Surprisingly, Christ is shown without a beard. Timothy Wilson-Smith describes Christ’s face in this painting as “clean-shaven, fleshy, even ugly” (Wilson-Smith 70). But this description is misleading and very far from Caravaggio’s real intention. Christ is surely presented as refined and almost feminine in appearance to act as a deliberate contrast to the three rather rough-looking figures surrounding him. Christ is resurrected and brings with him the beauty of the heavenly world to which he now belongs. The Supper at Emmaus makes use of religious symbolism. As Wilson-Smith points out, the items on the table all contain hidden meanings (Wilson-Smith 70). The bread and the wine refer to the Eucharist, the pomegranate refers to Christ’s Crucifixion, and the apples could refer to the Fall of Man. They are symbolic and yet, at the same time, perfectly natural things to find on a dinner table and an element of Caravaggio’s realism. Perhaps Caravaggio is also telling us that the world of the spirit – and Christ himself – can be found all around us, in everyday things. Caravaggio’s painting techniques also play a part in underlining the actual meaning of The Supper at Emmaus. In Caravaggio’s time, canvasses were first primed with a reddish brown ground, and on top of that was usually placed a whitish gray ground, upon which the artist painted. But technical experts have shown that Caravaggio painted directly onto the reddish brown ground (“Technical Art History”). The dark under-painting means that the shadowy areas of The Supper of Emmaus are heightened, so that the light areas – and Christ himself as Light of the World – emerge with greater intensity against this dark background. Painters often made detailed preliminary drawings. They would then prick little holes along the lines of the drawing, attach it to the canvas, blow charcoal dust over it, and then take it away to leave the lines of the drawing revealed on the canvas. Technical experts have discovered that Caravaggio did not use this method (“Technical Art History”). Instead, he sketched the outlines of the forms directly onto the canvas with a brush and may even have projected the image onto the canvas with lenses, after turning his whole studio into a kind of camera obscura (“Caravaggio’s Painting Techniques”). Even so, parts of The Supper at Emmaus are painted in such detail – the fruit on the table, the folds in Christ’s robe – that it is difficult to believe that they were not based upon earlier drawings. So perhaps Caravaggio did make some use of detailed drawings and the evidence for this has not survived. Caravaggio’s use of paint and colors also contributes to the meaning of The Supper at Emmaus. The technique is smooth and detailed, and there are no visible brush marks. The hair, the faces and the clothing of the four figures, the fruit, bread and wine on the table, are all painted with such loving care that we are made aware of their different surfaces. All of this contributes greatly to the realism of the painting. Caravaggio uses a limited range of colors – mainly black, white, brown, green, red and orange – because a wider range of colors might have made the painting too decorative and detracted from its seriousness. The colors are distributed evenly across the painting, not bunched in one area, and this helps to give unity to the whole composition. Caravaggio’s realism was not admired by everyone. Many people thought that figures from the Bible should be portrayed as ideal and noble beings. They thought that Caravaggio was being disrespectful when he used live models and depicted Bible characters as ordinary or even rough-looking people, like the real inhabitants of Caravaggio’s Italy. A Cardinal’s secretary even complained that Caravaggio’s paintings were full of “vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and disgust” (Artble). But that is to miss the whole point of Caravaggio’s art. He tries to show that the supper at Emmaus was an event which actually happened, something which took place in the real world of ordinary people. By setting the painting in an Italian inn, with figures in contemporary costume, Caravaggio may also be trying to show that Christ is still with us in the world, even in the humblest and most surprising places. Works Cited Artble www.artble.com Article on Caravaggio. Web. “Caravaggio’s Painting Secrets.” Article. www.walksinsideitaly.com Web. Oxford Art Online. www.oxfordartonline.com Article on Caravaggio. Web. “Technical Art History and Archeometry: An Exploration of Caravaggio’s Painting Techniques.” Article. www.restaurbr.org Web. Venturi, Lionello. Italian Painting: From Caravaggio to Modigliani. Skira, 1952. Print. Wilson-Smith, Timothy. Caravaggio. New York: Phaidon, 1998. Print. . Read More