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Christ at Emmaus Presenting the Bread
Bernardo Strozzi (Italian, 1581-1664)
1630/40
- Medium
- Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray laid paper with blue fibers
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 30.2 × 24.2 cm (11 15/16 × 9 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Depicted in profile, Christ seems compellingly real, his humanity as tangible as the bread he holds in his gnarled hands or the folds of his cloak on the chair. Drawn with black and white chalks on a somewhat faded blue paper, this sheet was undoubtedly a preparatory study for one of the 18 known paintings of the Supper at Emmaus produced by this Genoese-born artist and his workshop, probably during his later years working in Venice. For a Capuchin monk like Strozzi, the story of Christ’s appearance to two strangers on the road to Emmaus offered a chance to portray his divinity in very human terms.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
