MATTHIAS STOMER | The Supper at Emmaus

In the collection of the family of the present owner since at least c. 1960.

The canvas is lined, the varnish is even but dry and slightly opaque which has the effect of emphasising the fine craquelure. Apart from very few minor surface scuffs and scrapes there are no major damages visible. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals almost no intervention. This large canvas is in remarkably good near original condition. Offered in a carved and gilt wood frame in good condition.
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The subject was a favourite of Stomer’s, the disciples’ sudden recognition of Christ as he breaks the bread lending itself perfectly to the drama the artist sought to achieve in all his composition pieces. Cleopas (in the hat with scallop shell) and the unnamed disciple are instantly taken aback in shock. Stomer’s work from his Roman and early Neapolitan periods is unequivocally Caravaggesque, often to the point of exaggeration, striving to achieve the most dramatic effect possible. The silhouetting of the foremost disciple, whose outstretched arm shields the direct glow of the candle, is a conceit he had probably learned from Gerrit van Honthorst or another of the Utrecht Caravaggisti before he left for Rome in 1630. We see it, for example, in Honthorst’s Denial of St Peter from c. 1623 (Minneapolis, Institute of Arts).¹ In other examples of the subject Stomer arranges his three protagonists more conventionally around the rear, left and right sides of the small table, the flame glowing naked in the centre: see, for example, those in Grenoble, Musée des Beaux-Arts and Naples, Capodimonte.² It is an idiosyncrasy of this version that much of our view is blocked by the back of a disciple, seated at the side of the table directly in front of us, as he recoils, rising to his feet, in surprise. Wayne Franits, who has inspected this painting first-hand, dates it to the early 1630s, which is to say to the years he spent in Rome from 1630, or to the period shortly after his arrival in Naples in 1633.

1 B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford 1989, vol. I, p. 124, reproduced vol. III, fig. 1244.

2 Nicolson 1989, vol. I, p. 183, reproduced vol. III, figs 1479 and 1503.