The Road to Emmaus

Caravaggio’s depiction of the supper sequence is perhaps the most narratively charged of the three images in this exhibition. Relying on a dramatic close-up—the composition literally pushes to and beyond the boundaries of the picture plane—the artist captures the disciples’ astonishment in their moment of recognition. The shallow nature of the pictorial space, the life-size dimensions of the figures, and the positioning of the highly finished still-life elements—particularly the basket of fruit that transgresses the edge of the table—give the viewer a sense of absolute proximity.

This privileged eyewitness status granted to the viewer of this painting poses questions about our own recognition of the resurrection as viewers and the relationship between sight and belief.

Closer comparison between Luke’s account and Caravaggio’s interpretation reveals a sequential and temporal disconnect. In the Gospel, after taking the bread Jesus blesses it, breaks it, and hands to the disciples (Luke 24:31). Only after all three actions are the disciples able to recognize the risen Christ, after which he immediately vanishes (v.32).

In Caravaggio’s picture, the disciples’ abrupt, physical reactions of surprise—arms thrown open, chair hastily pushed back, eyebrows raised, brows furrowed, and gazes rapt—suggest their eyes have indeed been opened. But what do they see that incites this upheaval?

The beardless Christ, whose features Caravaggio subtly altered from conventional depictions of the time to account either for his unrecognizability or to honour the exquisiteness of his risen body, raises his hands in a gesture of blessing over the unbroken bread before him. How, then, can they have recognized him already? The loaf is cleverly concealed behind the roasted fowl painted in the same palette—the eucharistic body, just like the risen body, is concealed and yet revealed. Together, all of these elements serve as a pictorial meditation on the dialectic between the visible and invisible.

Finally, Caravaggio calls attention to this exploration of the limitations of vision, of seeing and not seeing, through the presence of a fourth figure in the scene: the innkeeper standing to the left of Christ playing the role of the clueless observer. He witnesses the theophany, he sees, and yet he does not perceive.

References

Keith, Larry. 2014. ‘Caravaggio’s Painting Technique: A Brief Survey on Paintings in the National Gallery, London’, in Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions, ed. by Lorenzo Pericolo and David M. Stone (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 31–42

Pericolo, Lorenzo. 2007. ‘Visualizing Appearance and Disappearance: On Caravaggio’s London “Supper at Emmaus”’, The Art Bulletin, 89.3: 519–39

Like the pair of disciples on the way to Emmaus who are unable to recognize the resurrected Christ, the viewer of this painting is initially distracted from appreciating its underlying theme. Joachim Beuckelaer crowds the foreground, which dominates the composition, with a hyperbolic abundance of produce and crockery. This highly tactile and faithfully rendered kitchen scene is a temptation of the senses. Its surfeit at first conceals and then reveals the significance of the biblical scene hidden within the composition.

The small background scene at upper right illustrates Luke 24:28–29, in which a trio of wayfarers—the resurrected but incognito Christ flanked by Cleopas and the unnamed disciple—are on the verge of parting at day’s end, indicated by the sunset in the landscape beyond. The disciples see, even touch, Christ and yet do not recognize him. The painter appears to have selected the precise moment when Christ feigns an intention to continue his journey while the disciples, still unaware of his identity, persuade him to join them for a meal.

This is suggested by the postures of the three figures: Jesus expresses his intent to go on by making a gesture of resistance with his right hand, while the two disciples reach for his arm and shoulder, entreating him to break his journey. The ambiguity of this moment—will he join them, or continue?—heightens the narrative tension of the picture and stresses the journey motif of the Emmaus story. The disciples are on the literal road between Jerusalem and Emmaus, but symbolically, their journey is from ignorance to insight.

The pictorial element bridging the two layers of Beuckelaer’s inverted composition is the pheasant hanging from the rafters before the kitchen’s framing column. This pheasant is the only ‘seeing’ element of the still life, emphasized by the conspicuously bright red feathers that surround its open eye. Its pupil, and thus its gaze, is directed towards the biblical action unfolding in the distance; it sees even as the viewer does not. The abundant still life thus becomes not only a celebration of the senses but also a reminder of their limitations—particularly of sight, the defining theme of the Emmaus sequence.

References

Falkenburg, Reindert. 1988. ‘Iconographical Connections between Antwerp Landscapes, Market Scenes and Kitchen Pieces, 1500–1580’, Oud Holland, 102.2: 114–26

Moxey, Keith. 1977. Pieter Aersten, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation (New York: Garland), pp. 98–102

Henry Fuseli’s painting, stripped of nearly all narrative elements, focuses on Luke 24:31, in which Christ ‘vanished out of their sight’. It is one of the few religious works ever painted by the artist, who generally favoured sensational and bizarre subjects with a particular interest in the supernatural.

In this work, Christ appears at the apex of a triangular composition while the two disciples of Luke’s account are seated on either side of a table below. The table is devoid of any remnants of the meal, including the just-broken and distributed bread that precipitated the revelation of Christ’s resurrected body. Instead, the merest suggestion of broken bread—formed by scant, flesh-toned brushstrokes—is almost entirely concealed in the disciples’ grasps.

The vanishing Christ is not suggested here by an invisible body but instead a highly visible one. Christ’s figure is the brightest of all. His curving form, blazing nimbus, and swirling hair evoke a flame that, like Christ himself, could be extinguished at any moment. This ordinarily secular painter’s fascination with revelatory experience may explain his attraction to the Emmaus sequence (Tomoroy 1972: 105). Rather than the astonishment of Caravaggio’s disciples, Fuseli’s disciples appear to express only sublime anguish. They are overcome.

The artist departs from the letter of the text in several important ways. While Luke states that the disciples’ eyes were opened, here they are literally blinded; the disciple at right goes so far as to cover his own eyes. They cower in their recognition of Christ’s resurrected body, but here the recognition is not visual. They are unable to look upon his face, much less examine the subtly presented but nevertheless apparent wounds in his palms.

The fraught relationship between seeing and not seeing is stressed stylistically by the artist’s heavy reliance on light and shadow, and further complicated by the fact that the painting’s viewer can see clearly even as the disciples cannot.

References

Tomory, Peter. 1972. The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli (New York: Praeger Publishers), pp. 102–06