The Supper at Emmaus

Denis had married Marthe Meurier the year before he painted this, and he wrote the two of them into a Gospel story. The risen Christ breaks bread at an inn on the road to Emmaus, where two travellers recognise him by that gesture alone. The disciple facing him across the table is Denis himself. The young woman coming in with a dish is Marthe. The inn is a room in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the town west of Paris where he grew up, and the rug on the floor is a thoroughly modern one. The way the composition opens onto glimpses of the world outside follows early Italian fresco painting, which in 1894 Denis knew only from prints and photographs. He crossed into Italy for the first time the following autumn, cycling through Umbria and Tuscany. The picture itself is barely larger than a sheet of paper, about 35 by 48 centimetres, oil on paper that he mounted on cardboard and then on panel.