Dinner at Emmaus

For most of its known history this canvas hung above the sacristy door of the church of San Agustín in Mexico City, and no record has been found of how it crossed the Atlantic from Zurbarán's workshop. The story comes from Luke's Gospel. Two disciples walking to the village of Emmaus fall in with a stranger, ask him to eat with them, and only recognise the risen Jesus when he breaks the bread. That is the moment painted here. Christ still wears a traveller's wide-brimmed hat, and his hands, splitting the loaf, sit at the centre of the picture beside an earthenware jug and two plates of food. In 1861, after Benito Juárez's reform laws closed the monasteries, the painting passed to the Academy of San Carlos, the art school whose collection became this museum. Zurbarán signed and dated it 1639, though the paint has darkened so much that the inscription can no longer be read.