Tríptico: A Última Ceia

In 1464 a religious brotherhood in Leuven that was devoted to the Eucharist signed a contract with Dieric Bouts for an altarpiece about the Last Supper. They even lent him two theology professors from the town's university to make sure every detail was correct. What Bouts painted is unusual for its moment. Most painters showed the drama of Judas being unmasked. Bouts instead shows the instant Christ blesses the bread, the founding of the sacrament the brotherhood cared about, with the apostles quiet and still around a plain table. And he did something new with the room. The walls, the beams, the tiled floor all run back to a single vanishing point behind Christ's head, one of the first clear uses of one-point perspective by a painter in the Low Countries. The finished work was paid off in 1468 and still stands in Saint Peter's church in Leuven, where it was made to hang.