Palma il vecchio the last supper

The large, albeit damaged, double-sided Last Supper is perhaps the greatest of the set of emotionally charged drawings that might be attributed to the young El Greco. It shares the defining characteristics of the other sheets: execution in liquid strokes of the brush, dramatic contrasts of dark pools of wash and bright white highlights, clusters of heads occasionally paired and turning to look atone another, and an intense, claustrophobic atmosphere.

Giorgionesque

We see here, however, the work of a more experienced artist, and the fact that Tintoretto's Last Supper at San Polo was the model for the drawing suggests that it would have been made by El Greco on his return from Rome to Venice in , at which time his work was invested with a greater confidence and power. Inscribed at lower left, mostly on painted-in part of album page, in pen and brown ink, "Tintoretto"; on album page, just beneath drawing, at center, ""; on verso of album page at top center, in pen and brown ink, "3 or B "; at lower center, beneath the drawing, in pen and brown ink, "; Tintoretto".

Watermark: Circle. Michiaki Koshikawa. Master Drawings, vol. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, , p. Montgomery, Ala. New York : Dover, , no. Skip to main content. Download image:.