The Last Supper (Bouts)

Bouts shows not the announcement of betrayal but the moment Christ blesses the bread and founds the Eucharist (Matthew 26:26-28), raising his hand in calm frontal symmetry at the center of a contemporary Flemish hall. The tiled floor recedes to a single vanishing point, among the earliest correct one-point perspective in Northern painting. The servants, including the man in the red cap, are thought to be portraits of the confraternity that commissioned this centerpiece of the Holy Sacrament Altarpiece for Saint Peter's in Leuven. Beside Ghirlandaio's Florentine Last Supper in this collection, it shows how differently North and South staged the same meal.