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Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence
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The Last Supper
From the four-piece Alba Passion
Design by Bernaert van Orley, ca. 152426
Probably woven in the workshop of Pieter de Pannemaker, Brussels, ca. 152528
Wool, silk, and silver- and gilt-metal-wrapped thread; 11 ft. 11 in. x 11 ft. 6 in. (363 x 351 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.1915)
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Description
Set in a lavishly decorated Italian Renaissance interior, this tapestry depicts Christ's final gathering with his twelve disciples. The details of the scene accord with the only account in the four Gospels (Luke 22:1423) that places the sharing of the bread and wine before, rather than after, Christ's warning that one of the assembled will betray him. The disciples debate the identity of the traitor. At the lower right, Judas rises to leave, his purse already filled with the payment for his treachery. In the background, under a portico, is a representation of Christ washing the feet of the disciples, an event that is described only in the Gospel of Saint John.
In this panel, one of two designed for the series in the mid-1520s, the concentration of the action in one dramatic moment and the intense visualization of the different reactions of the apostles reflect van Orley's debt to Italian sourcesLeonardo's famous fresco (woven as a tapestry in Brussels in the mid-1510s) and Raphael's Acts of the Apostles.
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