Last Supper

Lucas Cranach the Younger finished this Last Supper in 1565, for a church in Dessau, and its apostles are not the usual anonymous fishermen. Nearly two decades after Martin Luther's death, Cranach painted the men at the table as portraits of the Protestant reformers, Luther and his colleague Melanchthon among them, gathered around Christ like a founding brotherhood. The painter worked himself in too, as the cup-bearer stepping in from the side. Anhalt-Dessau was firmly Lutheran by then, and an altarpiece like this did quiet work, turning a sacred scene into a family portrait of the movement and its leaders. Judas, the betrayer, is the one figure left out of the company.