The Last Supper

Jerg Ratgeb was a German painter active in Swabia and Franconia in the early sixteenth century, notable as much for his dramatic fate — he was executed in 1526 for participating in the Peasants' War — as for his powerful, expressive paintings. His Last Supper, dated 1507 and now in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, depicts Christ's final meal with his apostles on the eve of the Passion, the foundational moment of the Eucharist. Originally part of the Herrenberg Altarpiece, this panel reveals Ratgeb's ability to orchestrate complex multi-figure narratives with intense psychological force. His German Renaissance style is marked by an expressiveness and sharpness that sets him apart from the more graceful Italianate painters of his generation. His biography as a revolutionary artist who paid for his convictions with his life gives his work a retrospective poignancy that later critics have found compelling.

Ratgeb employs characteristically German expressiveness in his figure modeling, with angular drapery, intense facial expressions, and a compressed spatial arrangement that heightens psychological tension. Apostles are grouped in animated clusters around the table, and his use of warm candlelight anticipates the dramatic chiaroscuro of later Baroque religious narrative painting.