Titian, Supper at Emmaus, 1533-34
The Boston show is full of groupings that allow you to compare how all three artists handled similar subjects. At various times each of them produced a version of The Supper at Emmaus, the story from the New Testament in which the Risen Christ reveals himself to a pair of astonished disciples. Titian's came first, in 1533-34, a picture of masterly calm and balance that borrows the stabilizing horizontal format of Leonardo's Last Supper. At the realization that his table mate is Christ, the disciple at left draws back, but gently. The one at right, who rises slightly from his chair, is probably a portrait of the patron who commissioned the painting, Count Nicola Maffei of Mantua.