"The Last Supper"; LIMOGES; 16th-17th century.

"The Last Supper"; LIMOGES; XVI- XVII century.
Enameled copper.
Measurements: 26 x 21 cm; 31,5 x 27,5 cm (frame).
The scene represents the famous Gospel passage of the Last Supper, in which Christ shares bread and wine with his twelve apostles before his Passion. In the center of the composition is Jesus Christ, the main figure, with golden nimbus, serene face and solemn gesture, at the moment when he pronounces the words of the institution of the Eucharist. To his right, the apostle John rests his head on Christ's chest, in a gesture of trust and filial love, while Peter and Judas Iscariot are recognizable by their proximity and attitude: the former with gray hair and a questioning gesture; the latter in an evasive attitude, with his body turned, without a halo, anticipating his betrayal. The architectural environment that frames the scene presents classical columns, latticed windows, a coffered ceiling and a hanging lamp in the central axis, all elements that place the representation within a palatial setting, reflecting the humanist taste of the Renaissance to integrate the sacred in everyday scenarios of nobility and formal rationality.
It is a remarkable example of French Renaissance devotional art, which combines the technical detail of enamel work with an intense symbolic and iconographic load of Christian tradition.
The Limoges workshop appeared in the last quarter of the 12th century and continued its activity until the 14th century. It flourished again in the 15th century, with the new technique of painted enamel. It will be the most important enamel workshop, above the Rhineland and Meuse, which disappeared in the 12th century and were dedicated to the production of single plates by order, which were then mounted on an object or joined together to form altar frontals. In Limoges, on the other hand, the production of objects, no longer just plaques, decorated with enamels, was launched, especially for religious but also for secular use. They are cheaper pieces, with copper base, and very showy for the enameled decoration, so they enjoyed a huge and immediate success throughout Europe. Limoges is also mentioned in documents, which indicates that it was a transcendent center known throughout Western Europe. One of the distinctive characteristics of Limoges will be its very shallow bottom dragging, which does not go beyond two or three millimeters. To represent details, such a fine partitioning is used that it can only be distinguished from the excavated one by close observation through a magnifying glass. Taking into account what was done in Rhineland and Meuse, Limoges introduced its own unmistakable features, and in fact the enamels were applied according to the client's taste, filling only the background, only the figures, or both. As for the chromatic range, he uses the same range of the Meuse workshops, very varied, but adding new colors, such as olive green, a light grayish blue or white for the flesh tones. In the long trajectory of these workshops, one of their main successes was precisely the fact that they not only made plaques, but also complete pieces.