Open full image Pin

The Last Supper

Albrecht Dürer

1523

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Renaissance Renaissance Religious

Dominant colour

The Last Supper is a 1523 by Albrecht Dürer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Albrecht Dürer
When & what style?: 1523 · Renaissance
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see thirteen men at a long wooden table, all seated on one side so we can see their faces. Dürer left out Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. That’s unusual—most Last Suppers show him slipping away or sitting apart. Here, the table is almost empty: just a chalice, a basket of bread, and a wine jug. The quiet setup makes the moment feel still, like the calm before something big happens. If you like this scene, look up *sfumato*—the soft, smoky way Leonardo da Vinci painted his own Last Supper.

The story of this work

Overview

Albrecht Dürer made this version of the Last Supper after returning from Venice. He adopted the typically Italian horizontal format, long table, and disciples seated on the far side. The table has been cleared, except for a single chalice, which, along with the empty platter, basket of bread, and wine decanter in the foreground, refers to the Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Significantly, Judas—the disciple who would betray Christ—is not present. Some art historians interpret the scene as the moment Christ exhorts his disciples to love one another (John 13:34), a…

Did you know?

One-point perspective is a technique that artists use to render three dimensional space using a series of invisible lines converging on a vanishing point. Here, as in most last supper scenes, the vanishing point is located on the figure of Christ.

Read the full account in the museum source.