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The Birth of the Church
Pierre-Marie Dumont

The Last Supper (c.1620), Luis Tristán (c. 1586–1624)
Luis Tristán (c. 1586–1624)
The table is a riot of opulence. Pieces of sweet melon edge their way among bitter lemons that lie whole or wheel sliced through the cloth’s white expanse. Apples erupt in fiery contrast to sandy rounds of bread placed delicately on folded linens or left neglected to the side. A leg of lamb lies bare on a plate. A marble salt-cellar encloses tomb-like its costly burden. Wine glows red and white in vessels of translucent glass. A knife, long and thin, protrudes with quiet menace. This is the Last Supper.
Stilling the heart
The Spanish painter Luis Tristán offers the viewer an unusual lens into the events of Holy Thursday. At first glance, the painting seems squarely divided into two unrelated parts: the welter of finery on the table and the more familiar ring of apostles around the table, with Christ in the centre. Yet this is one scene and not two; what happens on the table is as much a part of the painting as what happens around it.
Tristán brings the viewer into the mystery of the Last Supper by deploying the art of the still life, which, under the patronage of the pious king Philip III, was just beginning its ascendancy in the visual language of 17th-century Spanish art. Put simply, a still life is a painting of ordinary objects—often fruits, flowers, meats, or tableware—arranged to contrast their different textures, colours, and shapes. For the viewer, the still life can be a challenge, since there is no story to catch the mind, no obvious meaning to be harvested.
That’s part of the point: the genre is meant to slow the mind, to train the eye to look more deeply at what it sees. For the painter and the viewer both, the still life invites a kind of beholding where objects of great splendour are subjected to intense contemplation to reveal their humble materiality, and where the humblest matter is contemplated until its radiant splendour reveals itself. In Tristán’s hands, this astonishing back-and-forth of contemplative insight has one source and one infinite horizon: the Eucharist.
A world made liturgy
The varied pageantry of the objects on the table is brought to a climax in the small, broken loaf of bread in Christ’s left hand. To the eye, the loaf is no more or less splendid, no more or less ordinary than anything else on the table. Yet Christ’s right hand held in blessing combines with the other details of the scene to reveal that we are witnessing the central drama of the Last Supper: While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my body” (Mt 26:26). The bread deserves our minutest contemplation because it is other than what it appears: This is the body of the One who holds it.
But Christ’s face suggests that the painting is more than an illustration of the event that took place the day before the crucifixion. Tristán depicts Christ in the physical posture described in the first Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass, showing how he “took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven”, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to his disciples. Jesus is not merely celebrating a ritual meal with his disciples; he is instituting a liturgy, a pattern of prayer that elevates human words and deeds beyond their normal powers, to make Christ’s true Body and Blood present in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
The liturgical patterning of Tristán’s work opens up new horizons for the still life tableau covering the table. The leg of lamb on the table becomes a new mode of seeing Christ’s action at the Last Supper-Mass, with the element of sacrifice dramatically in view. The ominous knife suggests the blade used to slaughter the Passover lamb, which is present as sacrificial meal on the table and as eternal liturgy in the person of the Lamb of God, offering his body and blood at the table-made-altar. Seen in this light, the ordinary objects that round out the still life reveal the power of the Eucharistic liturgy spilling out into all aspects of human experience, and unveil the deepest beauty of which all earthly contemplation is a distant image: adoration of the Lamb who was slain in heaven’s eternal liturgy.
Two ways of beholding
In gazing upon Tristán’s Last Supper with the eyes of the body, the eyes of the heart receive an invitation to limitless communion with the Lord who has made himself present to humanity in the humility of the Eucharistic matter. Yet the image itself poses a question to the viewer’s heart: What do you want to see? Two sets of eyes gaze out at the viewer from within the image’s action. On the painting’s left, we see Judas, whose shadowed eyes look away from the table, blurrily struggling to spy out a future where his purse of silver would be worth its price. On the right, we see Tristán himself robed as one of the twelve apostles, gazing out at the viewer with clear, bold, questioning eyes, to ask if we want to see as he has learned to see.
The Eucharist present in Tristán’s painting does not impose itself on the viewer, any more than Tristán’s Eucharistic view of reality does. Jesus’ action at the Last Supper, as at the Mass, does not compel the heart to believe. It is possible to look at the Bread of Heaven and see a mere loaf, and to see cut fruits, meat, and wine as nothing more than food for the stomach. But this is not the only way to see. This table is an altar and this bread is God. The world is ablaze with heaven’s own opulence. Let those who have eyes to see, see.
Father Gabriel Torretta, O.P.
Scholar of medieval Christianity who teaches theology at Providence College in Rhode Island.
The Last Supper (c.1620), Luis Tristán (c. 1586–1624), Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain. © Museo Nacional del Prado, Dist. GP-Rmn / image du Prado.
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Joachim von Sandrart was born in 1606 in Frankfurt, to a family originally from Hainaut in Northern France. After Dürer, he is indisputably the greatest painter of the German school. In this important work, which was designed to serve as a retable, the artist closely follows the account of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, starting with the description of the assembly that was gathered: All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren (1:14).
Sandrart depicts at the centre the Virgin Mary receiving a tongue of fire that is clearly dedicated to her. But shouldn’t the Mother of God be considered as already filled with the Holy Spirit because of her Immaculate Conception? In the past, the question was much debated by painters. Nowadays the Catechism of the Catholic Church answers in the affirmative: “For the first time in the plan of salvation and because his Spirit had prepared her, the Father found the dwelling place where his Son and his Spirit could dwell among men” (CCC 721). “It was fitting that the mother of him in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9) should herself be ‘full of grace’. She was, by sheer grace, conceived without sin” (CCC 722). Mary can therefore be considered full of the Holy Spirit from the moment of her conception. However, most painters, advised by theologians, thought that the Virgin Mary should be depicted as receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Indeed, the fact that she was full of the Holy Spirit from her conception would not prevent her from receiving additional, specific outpourings for particular missions. The angel’s promise at the Annunciation, The Holy Spirit will come upon you (Lk 1:35), bears witness to this. It is fitting therefore that painters show the Virgin Mary participating fully in the foundational event of the Church: Her presence is vital to Pentecost, because she has a unique place at the birth of the Church: she is its Mother (see Lumen Gentium 8).
The picture is composed around the diagonal drawn as the dove of the Holy Spirit bursts from a cloud. The projection of his blessed light testifies to the powerful wind that manifests him. In the background the monumental but aged wall suggests the wall of the temple of Jerusalem: the New and Eternal Covenant will fulfil the Old one. Below, two steps indicate that right away the disciples will be prompted to descend to the outer court of the Temple, to render an account there of the hope that was in them.
Sandrart skillfully shows the supernatural dimensions of the event by the way he personalises the gestures and expressions of the figures. The postures and the physiognomies of the apostles are unfailingly eloquent: one sits to find in Scripture the prophecy and the interpretation of the event; another with his arm upraised seems to be a living Veni Sancte Spiritus (“Come, Holy Spirit”); his neighbour holds out his open hands to receive God’s gift; this one is praying with his hands folded; that one, struck by the fear of God, hides his face in his hands... Sandrart was one of the greatest portraitists of all time; we should not fail to admire also the subtle art with which he was able to harmonise the expressions on the apostles’ faces with their postures.
The most imposing figure in the assembly, Saint Peter, is depicted carrying the book of Scripture wide open, to symbolise his own vocation to be the supreme pastor and doctrinal authority. His face is turned toward the source of the tongues of fire; his expression is of one listening, reverently and in awe, to instructions of the utmost importance: You shall be my witness in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the world (Ac 1:8b).
Pierre-Marie Dumont
Pentecost, Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688), Lambach Abbey, Austria. © Arthotek / La Collection.
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