The Last Supper (Bouveret)

Christ sits at the center of a darkened upper room, faintly luminous, the apostles ranged around him in shadow at the solemn moment of the first Eucharist. Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, a French academic painter touched by Symbolism, renders the Last Supper with quiet, mystical realism, the light seeming to emanate from Christ himself. Now in a private collection, it is among the most ambitious religious paintings of the late nineteenth century - a sober, devout treatment of the age-old subject, blending precise naturalism with a hushed, otherworldly glow at a time when sacred art had largely fallen from fashion.