Caravaggio

In this brilliant review on exhibition of Caravaggio's painting at the National Gallery, Paul Bond explains his greatness. Caravaggio painted The Supper at Emmaus twice, in 1601 and in 1606 after exile. Paul Bond writes about the contrast between them and the change of style:

The two paintings are displayed side by side, and the contrast could not be more striking. The earlier painting is brightly lit from the left foreground, casting shadows of the standing figure onto the wall behind the table. The brightness lights up the table with its abundant feast, a still life in its own right. The moment of revelation is an expansive one: Christ’s arm is stretched forward, the disciple to his right has his arms flung wide, the seated disciple to the left of the picture is pushing his chair back. This is revelation as a physical moment.

In the 1606 painting, the mood is altogether different. The resurrected Christ is not the young man of the earlier painting, but an older figure of calm based on experience, offering a much smaller hand gesture. The painting is lit from behind, so that there is a large dark space unlit in the top left corner of the canvas. This dark empty space is a recurrent element in these later paintings. Where the earlier disciples are expanding outwards, the later figures are moving in, almost eavesdropping on an intimate moment. The faces are worldly, more experienced. Even the meal before them has shrunk to basic fare. What is most striking, seeing them together, is the way the composition of the later piece almost directly mirrors the composition of its predecessor. This is a new way of understanding the same theme, so that the revelation now becomes a psychological event, rather than a physical one.

Do see these paintings at Web Gallery of Art and reread the above paragraphs.