The Last Supper
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Mark 14:22
The passage
And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.
Mark 14:22
About this plate
A long table set across a stone hall, columns behind, a heavy curtain looped up at the right, a lamp on a chain. Christ sits at the centre with a faint halo; the disciples are ranged down both sides and round the near end, some leaning in, one turned away with his back to us. The floor is bare flagstone.
Doré has not composed it as a frieze. Half the figures are seen from behind or in lost profile, the table runs away from us at an angle, and there is a good deal of empty stone floor in the foreground. It looks like a room somebody is actually sitting in.
The verse is the institution, in Mark's characteristically flat register: he took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. No commentary follows. The next sentence is about the cup.
The bread is on the table, small and unremarkable among the dishes, and Doré gives it no special light at all. The lamp above and the halo are the only things glowing, and neither of them is what the verse is about.
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