VERONESE, Paolo
(b. 1528, Verona, d. 1588, Venezia)

Supper in Emmaus

c. 1560
Oil on canvas, 242 x 416 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

The magnificent decorative style, developed in the Villa Maser, was taken even further in the 1560s, in a series of large paintings on the common theme of suppers at which Christ was present. Veronese used the stories from the Gospels as an excuse to stage sumptuous feasts in sixteenth-century dress inside grandiose and theatrical architectural perspectives, producing realistic representations of social life at the highest level. The Supper in Emmaus (Louvre, Paris), the Supper in the House of Simon (Galleria Sabauda, Turin), and the Marriage at Cana (Louvre, Paris) belong to the series.