The Last Supper
Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
late 1613 or early 1614
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with touches of white opaque watercolor, over traces of black chalk, on cream laid paper, incised for transfer
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 30.2 × 19.7 cm (11 15/16 × 7 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This important drawing is one of a group of preparatory designs for a Roman Catholic prayer book (the Breviarium Romanum) that was reissued in 1614 under the new parameters of Counter-Reformation liturgy. This scene, in which Peter Paul Rubens placed the figure of Judas—instead of Christ—as center-most in the composition, preceded prayers celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi. The layered used of media and precise placement of compositional elements reflect Rubens’s intense desire to control the printed versions of his designs.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
