Das Abendmahl

Nikolai Ge painted this in Florence between 1861 and 1863, the years Russia was pulling itself apart over reform after the serfs were freed. He set the Last Supper not as a sacred tableau but as the moment a group of allies breaks, Judas rising to leave in shadow while the others sit stunned in the lamplight. When it reached Saint Petersburg it caused an uproar. The Academy thought it far too human, too much like an ordinary quarrel, and Dostoevsky said exactly that. Tolstoy, on the other hand, felt Ge had painted the evening precisely as he himself had imagined it. The disagreement did the artist no harm. Emperor Alexander the Second bought the canvas and the Academy made Ge a professor the same year.